The King's Grey Mare

by Jarman, Rosemary Hawley

  She turned, said crisply, ‘Lock it, but wait outside,’ then entered, turning the iron ring-latch behind her. In the room there was a foul stench of sweat, and something else, the acrid smell of grief. Disorder reigned: strewn on the carpet, which itself was tracked threadless in one straight line, were torn parchments, letters half-begun. The silk hangings had been wrenched from one wall and lay in shreds. There was an overturned jug of flowers, their petals stamped and bruised to pulp. In one corner was a deep Dutch bed, its covers torn and tousled and bearing the traces of old blood. And, standing by the windowslit, looking towards the light, was Margaret – was Marguerite. The shadow and spectre of Marguerite.

  She turned, and her face was visible. A cry of horror leapt in Elizabeth’s throat. Margaret walked steadily towards her on the worn path of carpet made by years of pacing. From the ruined face came an unrecognizable voice, cracked and harsh.

  ‘They said it was the Spanish disease, and they called me whore. But now they see it is naught but a deep canker that began in my breast and encompassed me. The legacy of my sorrow. God has seen fit to eat me up.’

  One side of the face was clustered and corroded with small tumours, the other emaciated so that even the shape of the teeth was visible. Margaret’s skin was yellow as fresh gold. The hair once bound with pearls grew in sparse grey tufts, but half the head was bald. The hellish apparition moved closer to Elizabeth, extending the twisted tragedies of its hands.

  ‘You brought the ring,’ she said. ‘The ring I gave la sage Jacquette, your mother. How does your mother?’

  ‘She is dead,’ Elizabeth said faintly.

  Margaret said with a ghastly smile: ‘She is fortunate then! I should kneel to you, Isabella, but I do not. Will you punish me?’ She touched the Queen’s rich sleeve. ‘So fair, so fine, my Isabella. Queen of Heaven!’

  She laughed, she stroked her own dreadful mask with writhing fingers. Elizabeth thought wildly: I was mad to come here. She tried to speak steadily.

  ‘Madame, have you no women, no physicians? You should be nursed.’

  ‘My doctors despaired, and my women left me … or they died,’ said Margaret vaguely. ‘They were afraid … of my great beauty!’ Her laughter began again. ‘My beauty and my greatness! Behold my greatness!’ She coughed, the yellow sinews in her throat straining like cords. Elizabeth felt the burn of tears at the back of her eyes. A false, far image of the lost Marguerite, darting and skimming like a swan in the dance … the Marguerite of jewels and fire and love. Standing alone in the unused shining armour, braver and more soldierly than many of her courtiers. She said, choking:

  ‘Ah, Madame, that you should have come to this!’

  There was something more than pity to make her weep. A prescience of certain doom. As if she had glimpsed, unwittingly, the forecast of a time to come. As soon as this thought arose she pushed it savagely away, construing it as a malaise born of Margaret’s dreadful presence.

  ‘I am dying,’ said Margaret. ‘Betrayed. They all turned upon me – slaughtered my flower in the field, murdered my poor, wandering husband. Did you know? Not a hall’s length from here, they snuffed the life from that kingly monk … Non! Isabella, you would not know of this.’

  Elizabeth was silent. It was better so; confessions did only harm, and Margaret had shown violence to the guard. She therefore let Margaret talk on, while tears collected in a strange pattern upon the misshapen face. Yet she looked at the hands that had once held her own tenderly while their owner wished her well in marriage; and she murmured: ‘They have used you ill, Madame.’

  ‘One especially,’ said the Frenchwoman. ‘One who promised me the world for my son. Curse Warwick!’ Sadly she said: ‘Was it my fault? Was it my vanity? Vanité des vanités, toute la vanité!’

  Which was worse, Elizabeth wondered, the weeping or the laughter? Worst of all was to see Margaret beginning to dance, a few trembling, parodying steps. See, Isabella, I am still fair! She came close, placing her arm about Elizabeth, who shrank in dread. She disengaged herself.

  ‘I am dying,’ Margaret said again. ‘And I am judged. Remember the old rhyme, ma belle? That you read so prettily that day?

  ‘Benedicite, what dreamed I this night?

  Methought the world was turned up so down,

  The sea had covered both tower and town …’

  I have forgotten it … ah, yes:

  I heard the sound

  Of one’s voice saying: Bear in thy mind,

  Thy lady hath forgotten to be kind!’

  Perchance I was unkind. Now is my reckoning. So be kind, Isabella. Always …’

  The arm clung again. Elizabeth averted her face. The canker could be carried on a breath. Margaret was singing in a ghost’s voice, moving her feet in that travesty of a dancestep.

  ‘We were so gay, in France, when I was a little maid. Oh, Jesu, Isabella, help me!’

  ‘How, Madame?’

  She said: ‘I do not wish to die here in the Tower. I must go home to France.’

  Shivering, Elizabeth said: ‘I will speak to Edward.’

  ‘Yea, go to the Yorkist butcher!’ said Margaret bitterly. ‘He who slew le pauvre Henri. You see, Isabella, they did not need to tell me. I knew the day and moment of the deed. I heard Melusine cry on the battlements, and I knew.’

  Elizabeth’s heart began to beat in slow, thick strokes. The sunken eyes searched her face.

  ‘An old legend, you may not know of it,’ said the Frenchwoman listlessly. ‘But whenever sorrow strikes a royal house – Melusine wails and weeps nightlong. You’ll not have heard her, for the world is yours. Queen!’ She spat the word.

  Yes, Queen, thought Elizabeth, chilled to the bone. Queens can be brought down. She looked again at Margaret, at the horrifying translation of her beauty. And they can be brought to this! She glanced quickly towards the locked door. Outside lay freedom, jewels, a soothing posset, music to forget by. No more of this painful, insufferable presence.

  ‘Madame, I leave you now.’ But Margaret went with her to the door, hanging desperately on her arm. With difficulty Elizabeth shook her off.

  ‘Give me your word, ‘Isabella. I would, I must, die in France.’ She began to cough, rasping, weeping. ‘If ever you loved me, child; this one favour. Bid the King release me from this place!’

  Elizabeth reached the door and hammered upon it.

  ‘Promise!’ It was like the high wild cry of a bird.

  She looked once more. Frail and ghastly, a living doom, Margaret stood there; also betrayed by Warwick, also a scion of Melusine, and also a Queen. A terrifying mirror image, a living, dying warning. She felt the chamber walls closing about her. For here, unmistakably, was destiny seeking to be placated. She retraced her steps, took Margaret in her arms. She pressed her face against the rotting, tear-wet cheek.

  ‘I promise, ma reine,’ she said. ‘I promise.’

  Edward called for wine. More than half-drunk already, he sought in the cup’s red heart a panacea for guilt. An end to trouble. He swirled the liquor round, turning the priceless goblet so that firefly prisms streaked from the silver. Pretty … He swallowed wine and motioned blindly for replenishment. He felt the cup’s coldness against his mouth; the taste brought Clarence back. He, Edward, drank wine, and wine had drunk Clarence.

  The King sat among his court, detached from all by a thin red veil. The faces about his dais were distant and drifted hazily. Their talk, geared to the sovereign’s mood, was discreet and soft. He heard their voices but their words were meaningless, for they were overlaid by the hammering echoes of earlier speech. Anthony Woodville’s voice, full of rich certainty, regret.

  ‘My heart’s blood not to tell you this, Sire. But Clarence is crazed with spleen. He has this day usurped the royal prerogative; accused and, hanged a woman said to have murdered his infant son. On your orders, my liege!’

  It must be true, Edward thought. Trusted Anthony had come riding from Ludlow to tell him this. So Edward had seized and hanged two o
f Clarence’s men in retribution. It had not been enough, however.

  ‘Your Grace! Today Clarence burst into Council in your absence and incited the lords to rebellion. He’s high in madness. “Twas all they could do to prevent him crowning himself King there and then …’

  His own rage had grown and burgeoned, while he stared into Anthony’s clear eyes. Anthony’s hand sought his, to steady him for the next phrase. Spoken without a tremor, for Anthony was courageous where the truth was concerned.

  ‘He declared that your Grace is no son of York, but the spawn of a French archer! and that England is ruled by bastards.’ The lines on his smooth face deepened in pain as he continued: ‘And that your Grace holds consort with witches.’

  He had needed that steadying hand, feeling the blood leaping and throbbing in his head, hearing his own roar: ‘Enough!’ then falling mightily upon a couch. While Anthony bowed devoutly so that his face was hidden. Much later, he heard his own voice saying: ‘She was right. Bessy was right, and I would not listen to her.’ And fear for the future had stared him in the face, fear that Clarence’s wild accusations cloaked a deadlier weapon. Clarence had kept close with their mother. How much had he wheedled from that ageing saint? How much would conscience let her hide? She who was privy to the knowledge of Eleanor Butler …

  Though Eleanor was now dead, she was his first and lawful wife. No Queen’s Gold for Eleanor, but Bessy was no more than the King’s concubine. The game was too dangerous. So, enough. Now he gripped the cup so that his fingers blenched. Clarence had chosen his own death, and a bizarre, unholy death it was. ‘To drown in wine, my brother!’ The plump bitter face smiling. ‘Can your Grace afford it?’

  Nauseous, Edward wondered: had he drunk deep before he died? What was it like to feel such bloodlike redness filling the lungs? How much could a man swallow and remain afloat? And, Jesu preserve us all! What had the everthirsty Tower gaolers done – after they took bloated Clarence from the vat? To cast out horror, he began the mental calculation of the cost of a tun of malmsey given to every child named Edward in the realm … With the fifty thousand crowns from Louis of France, a pittance. Louis had paid for peace. No battle was joined, although Edward had taken to Picquigny a hundred thousand men at arms. Everything had ended in love and gladness, with Louis’s veined and spotted paw clasping the King’s upon a fragment of True Cross. All had rejoiced; save Gloucester. The wine-cup was again empty, and here was Gloucester’s remembered voice, to torment him.

  ‘For the love of God, Edward, spare our brother of Clarence!’

  ‘Edward, our honour is sacrificed for this shameful truce. Louis will betray us, mark me …’

  ‘Ned, my brother, let Clarence live!’

  Now it was all over. Clarence dead; Louis paid off. Bess, the Princess Elizabeth of York, betrothed to the Dauphin of France as part of the bargain. And Margaret of Anjou sent home to France. He had been amazed by the fervour of Bessy’s plea for her release, and had acquiesced, for it was little to him where the dying woman ended her days. Now a chance, perhaps, for peace. He had soon silenced the army who had been cheated of their French battle. A few hangings, beheadings, and they came straight to heel. He was in his thirty-sixth year; middle-aged; time to settle down with a happy land under his gauntlet, his sons growing strong, his daughters beautiful. His Queen content and his mistresses willing. He lifted his heavy head and surveyed the courtiers. They shimmered behind the blood-coloured veil. Thomas and Richard Grey, laughing quietly together. Anthony, unrolling a gay Latin verse for the perusal of the Queen. Hastings, gazing in undisguised longing towards Jane Shore. Jane herself sat at the King’s feet, a foreshortened image of golden coiffed hair and two apple-round breasts. He touched her shoulder. She seemed very far away.

  ‘Sing,’ he commanded.

  High and shrill like an untaught boy, she sang rudely about a lecherous clerk. He grew quickly bored with the ditty. Again the spectre of Clarence arose, bobbing to the surface of the vat like a great wine-bag, and the gaolers crowding with their pannikins held ready … Gloucester had wept when he learned that his plea for leniency had been in vain. Gloucester seldom wept; he was a good soldier. He had gone home to the North, to his Anne, where he would expunge his sorrow in fighting the Scots.

  Edward called for yet more wine. Death drank with him, and the knowledge that Richard of Gloucester had been right – both about the French truce (for Louis could never be trusted) – and about Clarence, whom a spell in the Tower might have tamed. But Gloucester knew nothing of the dangers. He stretched his hand down to dabble between Jane’s breasts.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he said softly, drunkenly. ‘Eleanor’ And the Queen was suddenly at his side, pale, patting Jane’s head as she might caress a dog, talking swiftly over the high bawling song.

  ‘My lord, how you do tangle up fair ladies’ names! I have a boon to beg, a small one. The Countess of Richmond begs leave to present her son. Henry Tudor.’

  In his vision the silvery face swung and dipped. Fighting the dizziness, he said: ‘Ha! Tudor cub? Fruit of Lancaster …’ and saw the narrow poised face of Margaret Beaufort, looking shocked. From out of a long tunnel her even voice said: ‘Your Grace, my family are all loyal!’ Some remnant of sense spoke in his mind, ridiculing the Countess, but the words were too difficult, and he nodded, saying: ‘Let him come.’

  Behind the great doors, Henry Tudor was waiting. He had been waiting like this for almost all his twenty subservient, repressed years: in the house of Lord Herbert at Pembroke, or under the harsh rule of his Uncle Jasper, or, in exile after Tewkesbury, as a despised nonentity in the court of Francis of Brittany. Even now he had waited a week at Westminster for the royal summons, hearing the whispered instructions of Morton and the Stanleys, seeing the fretful excitement of his mother. And only he was calm. A generation of Welsh and Frankish blood moved softly in him, bidding him gather himself for new beginnings. A native ruthlessness told him that behind those doors he would find a court of fools. He gave a slight shrug to his patched doublet, smoothed his dry, rust-coloured hair. His face was long and lean, his mouth almost lipless. It was the face of a man older than twenty, and in it the eyes were as cold as a preying bird’s.

  Then he smiled, and was changed. The smile lent wistfulness to his demeanour, so that he looked like a starved infant offering macabre love, and the predatory eyes grew lambent and wise. The mouth slid upwards in a bow and quivered. Before him a light-chink between the doors widened into vast radiance. An usher called his name. Across a mile of lozenged tiles he went, between the candle-flames and diamonds and quizzical stares. Once, the faintest ripple of laughter blew across his path and was unheeded by him. His thin shanks carrying him steadily, he advanced upon the coveted court of the Plantagenets.

  He saw a sorry, drunken monarch, great belly straining at velvet, the ruined beauty of his face lapped in red jowls, pigeon’s blood rubies on his fat hands and breast. A blonde harlot at his feet. A fairhaired, lovely child (the eldest, Bess of York; his mother had primed him well); a nervous ageing minister; that would be Hastings. Next to him the Woodvilles, handsome Anthony, the sons of Sir John Grey; and Lionel, Bishop of Salisbury, who had the royal favour. Henry reached the dais and heard the King mumbling an uninterested welcome. Now for the obeisance, as he had been schooled. The right knee crooked – no trembling – and down, down to the floor, where the eyes must go. Obeisance. Abasement. The left toe stretched out behind, sliding on the red-black crosswork of the tiles. Now, the plump hand with its engorged veins beneath his lips. Dry lips; treason to leave spittle. Good. Good. Another moment of waiting. ‘Courtly manners, my young friend,’ said the deep, slurred voice. ‘Rise. You may greet our Queen.’

  He raised his eyes. They slipped quickly across the intimidating semi-circle of faces, imprinting on his consciousness the friends, the foes, the ones unknown. Unerringly he registered their strengths and their failings. The Woodvilles, for example, were imperious as gerfalcons, and as fine-feathered. If such a bi
rd were stripped, feather by feather, what remained? A bleeding, earthbound ruin, unable to prey. His eyes ceased travelling momentarily to greet the black omnipotence of Morton. The Bishop’s white hand lifted slightly; the Bishop’s hooded eye blinked in tacit approval.

  Lastly, slowly, Henry looked at the Queen. He appraised her silks and furs. He noted that she was jewelled like a pagan princess. He guessed her age, saw that she carried those years well. Yet his unflickering eye marked also her inner disquiet, the torment of her lifelong insecurity. Whispering a humble greeting, he assessed her body and soul. It was as his mother had hinted. Elizabeth, the pawn of Richmond. For all her hauteur, ready to cling and listen and be led.

  She, looking for the first time upon Margaret Beaufort’s son, experienced a strange recognition. It was like the sensation of meeting John Grey at Eltham. This is he, at last. Love, you are come.

  But this was not love. It was the unknown, the recognizable unknown. Like the reprise of a song unheard, or the shadow of an unconscious dream. She withdrew her hand from that of the youth. With customary coolness she said: ‘We greet you well.’

  The feeling remained, astounding in its certainty. As Henry Tudor scraped and bowed and backed from the dais, she knew that here was one of utter significance, for evil or for good.

  PART THREE

  The Boar of Gloucester

  1483–5

  O God! What security shall our Kings

  have henceforth that in the day of battle

  they may not be deserted by their subjects!

  The Croyland Chronicle: 1485

  Grace Plantagenet stood at the latticed window of the stillroom and watched the sky, where oyster-coloured clouds were palely lit by sun. Between delicate spires and stout turrets she could see distantly the brown, boiling river, flushed with spring tides. Once a bird – blackbird or thrush, too swift to tell – dived straight at the window, then veered off, wheeling up and away over the palace of Westminster. She thought: my father’s spirit! But this was foolishness; if Edward had departed as a bird it would be no common warbler but a golden kestrel, or a snowy falcon. The Falcon of York. The ethereal towers blurred suddenly and she dabbed at her eyes with a sleeve. She had sworn to weep no more; rather mourn in silence. The ostentatious wailing and hair-tearing of the women and some of the men repelled her. Many had only courted Edward for his easy favour. She, Grace, came from his royal loins; she had more right to cry than they. Even now in some corridor outside the stillroom she could hear Jane Shore, voluble in grief as in laughter.