There was knocking, faintly heard, upon the postern door of the Sanctuary. The voice of Abbot Milling echoed in the passage outside.
‘I fancy this is Cardinal Bourchier,’ said Morton. ‘Make ready your son, Madame.’
He was poised to leave, unseen, through the intricacies of cloister and watergate. She said quickly: ‘You have given me comfort, my lord. But what of Gloucester?’
‘Gloucester will be murdered, as planned previously,’ said the Bishop, half-way through the door. ‘They come, Madame. Let down your hair.’
The night sounds of Southwark rose and filtered through the upper window of the inn room. From the street where hanging gables and a hot white moon made patterns on the ground, came a snatch of a drunken song. A dog howled gruesomely for minutes on end until quenched by a blow or a caress. Running feet and the jangle of steel told of the night watch pursuing a miscreant. Someone threw a metal canikin from a window and a woman yelled shrewishly. Further down the street someone else was noisily sick.
In the inn’s best bed, Jane Shore lay watching the cockroaches. Two were parallel, neck-and-neck, and Jane curled her toes under the coarse sheet, willing the one she had christened Dorset to win. It was through Dorset she was here at all. For him she had temporarily abandoned luxury and lay in this miserable abode of illicit love with the late King’s Lord Chamberlain. She turned her head on the pillow and looked at him. Hastings was fast asleep, breath bubbling gently. He looked younger in the moonlight; the greyish stubble on his chin looked almost fair. Jane sighed gently, and glanced back at the roaches. The smaller one had spurted ahead and Dorset was at least an inch behind. This was dull sport. She thought tenderly of her last meeting with Tom Dorset when he had promised her the world. She decided, when this tiresome half-understood affair was over, that she would ask him to take her to the horseraces at Smithfield. Hastings would not take her anywhere – he would not even lie with her in the Palace. ‘Too dangerous, my heart.’ Too old, too dull. The satisfaction of raising him to a pitch of undreamed-of ecstasy had soon palled for Jane, but this she kept to her practised professional self. Dorset had bidden her, and she would obey to the letter. Dorset was her sky and stars, her daily bread, her master. And her work was nearly at an end.
Day after day, robed in a nun’s habit, she had gone meekly through the cloister of Westminster Sanctuary, past the grim grey arch with its vine-leaf capitals, walking like a penitent yet wanting to scream with laughter. In her sleeve she usually carried a packet, writings of instruction, warning, information. Once inside with the Queen, she could throw off the seemly hood, smile brightly into the tense white face, and take wine. Often there would be a present for her, a small gold nouche for her bosom, trinkets insignificant enough to be worn unnoticed. When it was time to return and wait for Hastings at the inn, she had to commit to memory a message. The Queen would never touch pen to paper in this enterprise. So Jane would take her measured murmuring way from the sanctuary like the holiest nun treading out a psalm. Half the messages meant nothing to her; that was why she needed to repeat them over and over. Some were mere fragments.
Tell him – Stanley is with us now in spirit.
The Bishop approves.
Sometimes the Queen’s face was terrible. Jane had always been afraid of her, and muttered the messages more fervently in consequence.
We shall be victorious. This latest blight is doomed.
There was mention of the Queen’s relatives; sweet Tom’s uncle and brother.
Anthony is full-fettled. He awaits your men to help his escape.
Sir Richard Grey has his captor’s ear. They will drop the bridge at your captains’ signal. Pray reply soon.
Bishop Rotherham is mine again.
This last made Jane chuckle. It was a succession of riddles; yet the Queen had never shown more tolerance of Jane. No raised voices, no wounding waspish chiding of Jane’s noisiness. Today, after the weeks of trudging back and forth, the lesson had been easy; it made sense.
Tomorrow, Friday 13th June. Stand ready. Kill Gloucester and Buckingham. Bring out my sons from the Tower and meet with me at Westminster.
She slid cautiously from the bed and crept across the moon-dappled floor to drink wine from a pitcher. King Edward had taught her to drink. Burgundy wine like rubies; the fiery cornelian of good Clary; sack possets heavy with curdled cream, mace and nutmeg. The breath-taking hypocras, burning with aqua vitae and pepper. Last November they had toasted La Mas-Ubel, patron of seeds and fruits, in a great bowl of strong ale in which six roasted apples swam in raw sugar and ginger. They had taken it piping hot and later Edward had tumbled her on the floor of the chamber. A florid, laughing giant, ogreish with fat. She had never loved him, but she had liked him and she missed him sorely. Were it not for Dorset, her life’s light, she would be quite alone. The Palace was shrouded in mourning and preparation for the young King’s coronation; all was lawyers’ talk, work, no gaiety. The most commanding voice was that of Buckingham, so haughty that he had dissolved Jane in tears. Gloucester seemed not to notice her at all. But between the two of them they ruled Westminster, and the happy drinking days were fled.
She stole back to bed, her long, sweat-damp hair stranded over her naked body. Hastings was awake and watching her.
‘My Jane,’ he said, sleepily reproachful. ‘Why did you leave me?’
She wound her arms about him, feeling the slack, old man’s flesh, suffering the rasp of his beard on her breast. ‘Sleep, my lord. You were so peaceful.’
‘No, I had a dream–,’ he said uneasily. ‘An awful vision.’
She crooned to him. ‘Dreams are airy stuff, the work of devils trying to frighten bliss. Sleep, lord.’
‘Then stay close, Jane.’ He stroked her shoulder with a thin veined hand. ‘Holy Jesu! Never did I think these times would come …’
‘You and I together, dear lord?’ she said artfully. He was so often tongue-tied with her; she had to shape the words for him.
‘Nay … yea! Truly, Jane, I never thought I should have you – I watched you with Ned – I longed, imagined. I turned from my good wife, Kate. I behaved like a heretic and would not lie with her. You’ve bewitched me, Jane. Or someone has,’ he said in a quieter voice.
Tomorrow, his thoughts ran. Tomorrow, tomorrow, like the tick of a clock, or the frantic riding of an army.
Tomorrow I shall engineer the killing of one who was dear to me, to a man I loved. One who himself loved me well, who rode with me against Lancaster, when he was a sickly stripling youth. Gloucester, who took my hand, not two moons ago – Jesu! who took my hand today! – saying: ‘Thank God for you, Will Hastings. Thank God for you, in these times of strife and madness.’ Tomorrow Gloucester’s blood will stain this loving clasping hand. And Elizabeth, upon whose coming I once looked with spleen and disapproval, shall be again supreme. Elizabeth, who put down venom like a ratcatcher throughout the court. Elizabeth, whose policies are loathed by me. She who broke her sovereign’s heart with Desmond’s death, and used her brother like the most skilled provocateur to bring wretched Clarence to a bubbling end. Elizabeth, who split the soul of Warwick until he knew neither day from night, nor friend from foe. Elizabeth, whose messages. I meekly bear, whose will I wreak! Cloudily her face swam before his mind; the lazy-lidded eyes, the tight red mouth. Woodville and Lancaster wench, you never warmed my lust. Yet to Edward, you were Bathsheba, Salome …’
He turned closer to Jane, burying his tired slack flesh against her, weary, cold of conscience. She murmured, ‘Yes, my lord,’ and, ‘There, my lord!’ while the inn’s lath-and-plaster quaked with the quarrels and lovemaking of others, and they lay tightly within it, part of a corporate squalidity.
He slept and dreamed anew. He awoke shouting, beating the bedcovers. From sheer terror, Jane swore at him, using the coarse expressions of her early life in Chepeside. Sticky with sweat he clung to her, the pupils of his eyes distended and black in the moonlight.
‘Holy God!’ he gasped. ‘Fi
rst, a boar – Gloucester’s Boar, a device of unsurpassed might. But worse! Christ protect me! It came out of the sea …’
His hands hurt her; she listened. ‘Monstrous, shining like harness, plated with gleaming scales. It took me about the neck, each scale like a barber’s knife. Jane! Jane …’
Tomorrow is cursed. Friday, the thirteenth of June. I have schemed against the Protectorship. Will the Queen save me now? Or Morton, or Stanley? Or Rotherham? Or Anthony Woodville, Richard Grey, and the others who like myself are embroiled blood-deep in this treason? All these weeks I have been blinded and by what? For what? For the love of a foul-mouthed whore whom my great family would not have used in their kitchens … He turned upon Jane, but she had left his side.
‘Be comforted, sweet Will,’ she cried, anxious to amend the oaths she had hurled at him. Look!’ She began to writhe and cavort in the moonlight, as the King had loved her to do. ‘Look! I’ll dance for you!’
She danced, and another danced with her, a shadow whose hair was long and streamed like fern, whose hips and thighs undulated, whose whole outline bore an unearthliness beyond thought. Fresh sweat gushed on Hastings’s brow. He rose, clumsy with fright, tangling his feet in the bedclothes and falling on the filthy boards. He scrambled and groped; broken with panic he found his clothes at last. The fine velvet doublet and the shirt in fair Rennes cloth, the plumed bonnet with the pendent diamond, the hose, the piked brocade shoes. Jane became still. Her full face regarded him quizzically. The King had had these strange humours too, leaping up in dead of night to leave her; these hauntings which she did not try to understand.
‘I must go back to Westminster,’ he muttered, fumbling to fasten his cloak, and making for the door.
‘You will have to cross the river,’ said Jane. ‘And no boatman will bear you at this hour.’
His face livid, he wheeled once more to face her, made an inarticulate noise and plunged through the doorway. After a moment Jane crawled back into bed. Light-headed, lightminded and calm as ever, her last thought before sleeping was that tomorrow all would be well. No more of this fleahouse. No more coaxing of an old man’s stubborn pizzle. The Palace again, and sweet Thomas in her arms.
Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, sat writing at a small table. Meticulously he shaped his work, giving to each initial letter a thick downstroke and to the tails a delicate grace so that they hung like cats on a wall. Sunlight pooled on his bent head and touched sparks from the jewel on his hand as it moved elegantly across the parchment. He looked up, and, half-blinded by radiance, saw, through stout bars, the surging green world outside. The bailey of Pontefract Castle lay below his window; by craning a little he could see, beyond the wall, the wild north country rioting in summer. Things too distant for his eye he imagined: the dales, green upon green, tracts of mighty oak, fells assaulted by torrents of white water. From far away came the sound of a hunting horn. He bent again to his work. Scholar, aesthete, courtier, Earl and Duke, he wrote; and so doing, saw visions.
I fear, doubtless
Remediless
Is now to seize
My woeful chance.
For unkindness
Withoutenless
And no redress
Me doth advance.
‘Advance!’ he said softly, and laid the quill aside. The horn became a trumpet, with acid, flaunting bray. His sister sat before him. Every detail of her burned his sight with its impeccable loveliness. Her high crown had rich closed arches, each point diademed with a fleur-de-lys. Suncoloured brocade clothed her; striped and slashed with the royal pattern, her sleeves were gold and blue, the rich dark azure of the Garter. Broad strips of ermine crossed her bodice to fall in rouleaux over her shoulders. More ermine bloomed on the hem of her gown and ran like the tail of a beast along the immensities of the train, a fold of which she held looped over her wrist. Her hair was loose and she was smiling, a little smile directed at the points of her tiny shoes. He knelt. He stretched out both hands, and laughed as she did, a sound of ecstasy and triumph. ‘Queen! Queen of England and of France!’ said Anthony and bent his head, his bedizened bonnet held in courtly fashion in one hand swept out behind him. A wind blew about him; a perfumed tempest emanating from a dozen costly gowns; a hectic breeze of laughter. All his sisters and other ladies of the court surrounded him – fair as flowers – their shining heads auburn and black and gold. With their chattering mirth they engulfed him. He felt a soft fumbling about his thigh, looked down and saw a gold token clasped there; a priceless garter ingrained with sapphires. From its centre hung an enamel flower of rosemary; the whole garter was fashioned in the double ‘S’, the one-time device of Lancaster.
Elizabeth said softly: ‘Souvenance, my dear lord. A token of my remembrance and of yours.’
One of the ladies roguishly said: ‘Sir! Look in your hat!’ and he felt inside its velvet rim, and drew out a letter bound with gold thread, bearing the same emprise of remembrance, with a jewel for a seal.
The Queen bent forward. ‘The articles of combat, sir. You shall do me honour in the tourney.’
‘My adversary?’ he said.
‘De la Roche.’ Her eyes gleamed, flickering a pattern of joy across the vibrant air. The look caught him up and spun him round. De la Roche was grounded already, brought grunting to the turf by one lance-thrust. To your great honour, Madame!
‘Souvenance,’ she said again. ‘Remember me.’ Her eyes were bright, too bright to gaze on longer, and he wrote again, steadily.
With displeasure
To my grievance
And no surance
Of remedy.
Lo, in this trance,
Now, in substance …
The vision changed. A pale girl leaned dangerously far from a window above him. Tears lined her cheeks. Beneath his body he felt his horse curvet and plunge. Be careful! he wanted to cry. It is a long way down! Her lips moved, but he could hardly hear her. Take me away. Take me with you! He shivered, shook his head, saw his own bony boyish wrists straining at the taut bridle.
‘No.’ He turned from her. ‘Make the best of it.’
‘I will repay you,’ she wailed. ‘If it’s the last thing I do in life!’
Nay, Bess. I am today repaid. He took up the pen afresh. That was the only time, Madame, that I did not your will. The rest of my days have been yours, inspired by you; your wit, your will was mine.
Lo, in this trance,
Now in substance,
Such is my dance,
Willing to die.
He had jousted with De la Roche. He had fought him with broadsword, lance and axe, horsed and on foot. The loges all around were crammed with screaming exaltation. The sound of excitement drowned the blaze of the clarions and the silken throb of the great standards flying over the royal canopy. He had beaten De la Roche into the ground, then, full of delight, had made the Bastard of Burgundy eat earth; had struck a secret blow for France, and for Lancaster. For the old days of his heritage, for his parents’ pride. Above all, as in all things, for her. He had jousted, he had sung and prayed and had travelled, in the presence of England’s flower; he had visited shrines in undreamed places, had crossed the snarling bare mesetas of Spain and the cypressed plains of Italy. His translations, his tracts and verses, lay, revered as genius, in the Palace library. Dancing, jousting, learning, teaching, prayer. Such is one man’s life … along the passage outside he heard unhurried, inexorable steps. In this castle Richard of Bordeaux was done to death, secretly. Yet some said that he still lived, that he was seen twenty years after in the wilds of Scotland … a bad place, Pontefract.
Methinks only
Bounden am I,
And that greatly
To be content.
Seeing plainly
Fortune doth wry
All contrary
From mine intent.
He murmured, as a release from the poem’s terse metre:
‘Fortune is a woman. She cannot be gainsaid.’
The pale face
reappeared, crowned, speaking later words: ‘Do my will. Help me, I am afraid. Do my will.’ Aghast, he saw the slender figure falling, dropping from the window like a falcon in stoop, landing by chance rather than judgment upon his saddle. The horse bolting, going at a steaming pace through briars and brushes so that their faces, the faces of brother and sister, were torn and their eyes blinded by the wind. Elizabeth laughed, a madwoman, a spirit of air, utterly fey … In the lock of his cell door a key turned. He wrote on, faster.
My life was lent
Me to one intent,
It is nigh … spent
Welcome, Fortune!
But I never went
Thus to be shent
But she it meant
Such is her custom.
With careful finality he put the quill aside, and smiled. Apt as anything Lucretius wrote. Let those who read it afterwards think I chided Fortune. I, wherever I may be, shall know otherwise. There is but one ‘she’. One who breaks the bread of recklessness and holds out a bitter cup. I loved her; I did her will. He rose at the entrance of Sir Richard Ratcliffe, the lawyer and constable sent by Gloucester to oversee this day’s work. A chaplain was with him. Ratcliffe said: ‘Are you ready, Earl Rivers?’
‘I shall never be more or less so.’ He smiled, and with lordly hand indicated the pile of neatly tied rolls on the table: his will, several greetings to followers, and an apology to someone wronged long ago.
The King's Grey Mare Page 30