The King's Grey Mare

by Jarman, Rosemary Hawley

  ‘You will see to these?’

  They bowed in assent and parted for his going from the cell. The barred sunlight lit the grey walls and his erect back with the same impartial joy. As they reached the courtyard he stopped and looked about. There squat and terrible, was the block, and lined up near it with a muttering priest were the Queen’s son, Sir Richard Grey, and Thomas Vaughan and Dick Haute, his adherents from Ludlow. Grey and Vaughan were composed, but Haute looked as if he were about to vomit up his fear. Along the wall of the bailey a little detachment of Yorkshire infantry stood at attention. A drum crackled and throbbed. Anthony turned to Ratcliffe and said ‘Then we are all to die?’ The herald began his proclamation: ‘In the name of Richard Duke of Gloucester, Earl of Cambridge, Constable of England, Lord Protector of the Realm …’ and Ratcliffe inclined his dignified head.

  ‘What of the others?’ said Anthony.

  ‘I may tell you now, my lord. Lord Stanley is confined in the Tower of London, as is also Archbishop Rotherham. Bishop Morton is in the custody of the Duke of Buckingham at Brecon. William Lord Hastings is sentenced to death.’

  So this was where conspiracy had led them all. They had been so confident, Buckingham and Gloucester as good as dead and the whole house of Woodville reunited in triumph. They had reckoned without Buckingham’s tireless agents by whom the whole conspiracy had been smelled out. Buckingham and Gloucester had acted swiftly and ruthlessly.

  The sun crept behind a cloud. ‘For great treason against the Crown of England!’ The herald’s voice broke harshly upon the last syllable. Anthony went forward to the block. He smiled, partly to comfort Grey, Haute and Vaughan, partly because he remembered his poem.

  Such is her custom

  When he knelt, the white-hot sun appeared again, so that ripples of livid light, drifting, coruscating, gilded the axe. The steel fell swiftly, like the plunge of a great silvery fish.

  Mistakenly she thought the worst to have befallen. When they brought the news of the utter collapse of all she had striven for, she fell into a rare swoon. Recovering to the sound of her daughters’ sobbing, she stared about her, temporarily witless. The familiar chamber with its stark holiness seemed to shrink into a prison. Even the sound of Abbot Milling’s monks, droning their ceaseless praise, was a salute to the Protector’s power. With one sweep five of her most precious pawns were scattered from the board, lost irrecoverably. Anthony – a thought not to be borne; Richard, John’s son. Vaughan and Haute were more dispensable, Hastings a mere broken tool. Dead, all dead, none the less; no more could she call upon them, mould them, direct them. And Morton, imprisoned in Buckingham’s castle – that was a grievous loss, and Stanley, and Rotherham … She sat among the rushes and held her head, while her women looked on, daring to say nothing. Summer boughs brought in for decoration lay around the hearth. In their greenness she saw the shape of demons. Nothing could be worse than this.

  Now she knew. What she had termed the worst was only a rumble forecasting the holocaust. Under the stream of waking thought the fear had always remained no matter how many times she had laid it away like a worn-out gown, telling herself she was done with it. Now, into her sanctuary came that fear, nourishing and well-fanged, with the stem approval of the law behind it. Cardinal Bourchier gave it a voice. Silk-clad and hatted, he entered with his train of priests and lawyers. He unleashed a great vellum, newly sealed, and read from it sombrely.

  He read that news had been disclosed to the Council that Edwardus Quartus, late monarch of the realm, did take unlawfully in marriage one Elizabeth Grey, he being already trothplight and married to another, Dame Eleanor Butler, daughter of the old Earl of Shrewsbury. The Cardinal’s voice faded, was replaced by Edward’s, hoarse and bemused as he rolled on the bed, his brain glittering with herbs of madness. I am married already.

  ‘… that they did live together therefore sinfully and damnably in adultery …’

  Eleanor is with the nuns. She will die soon. Bessy, my fate!

  Nineteen years of suffering Edward’s demands, his boisterousness, his infidelities. Of bearing and burying his children. Of always feeling alone.

  ‘… and that we, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal declare that as the said King stood trothplight and married to another, his said pretended marriage with Elizabeth Grey is null … that all their issue have been bastards, and unable to inherit or claim anything by inheritance, according to the law and custom of England.’

  A shrill voice interrupted; young Bess, running forward, ill-mannered through desperation.

  ‘Eminence! Am I no longer a princess?’

  He looked at her severely, yet indulgently, and his voice was quite gentle.

  ‘Madame, you are the Lady Elizabeth Plantagenet, bastard daughter of King Edward.’ He then cleared his throat to resume reading from the membrane. A pain gripping her breast, Elizabeth said, before he could continue:

  ‘By whose ordinance is this document signed and sealed? And by whose information are these things said?’ She felt her head and face grow hot; the feeling frightened her. She repeated, more quietly: ‘Is there proof?’

  The Cardinal lowered his roll. ‘Madame, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal ordain this statute in accordance with the Three Estates of the realm. It is the most important document of this century. As for the source, there are many witnesses, the most prominent being Bishop Stillington. It was he who performed the marriage ceremony between his Grace and Dame Eleanor Butler.’

  Stillington. She wanted to scream and swear. Stillington, whom she had thought dead by now and no danger. Years ago she had instructed Bishop Alcock to keep a close eye on Stillington. The pain in her breast grew stronger, frightening her even more. Death was brought by humours such as these.

  ‘There is more, Madame,’ continued Bourchier rather ominously. Without looking at the parchment he said: ‘God help you, for there is much talk of sorcery.’ To a man, the priests and lawyers crossed themselves. ‘That you and the late Duchess of Bedford did …’

  Elizabeth closed her eyes, turned her head sharply to the left, a gesture which silenced the cardinal. The pain receded, leaving a dullness as if a stone lodged in her breast. She counted those who had known about the Duchess’s secret campaign. The clerk, Daunger – he was dead. The Sewardsley nuns – they had told Bray. Margaret Beaufort! Yes, so I have lost her too, she thought numbly. She has betrayed me and upholds Gloucester. For the first time she thought of Gloucester not as an obstacle to be slain or thwarted, but as a vastly under-estimated enemy. Worse than the Fiend, more dangerous than babbling, power-crazy Clarence. If she looked through the window over the Abbot’s little flower garden she could see Gloucester’s fleet anchored in the Thames. He was leaving no hazard open. She had never chosen to know him, but it seemed that he knew her well. Bourchier said: ‘Dame Grey. Are you sick, Dame Grey?’

  She did not answer. The pain returned, spread from breast to throat to head, gripping with vicious jaw. This was the worst. Worse than any outrage of the Fiend’s. Warwick had stripped her only of Bradgate and that had been regained. He had taken only her tapestries, her lands. But Gloucester, who had wept at Warwick’s corpse-side, now stripped her of her sovereignty. Dame Grey. Dame Grey. No more Elizabeth, Queen of England. Her head began to shake, as if an unseen hand moved it.

  Cardinal Bourchier was alarmed at her appearance. As if by alchemy the contours of her face sank and flattened, the taut jaw dropped. Her colour changed from livid white to fiery red then back to startling pallor. While her mind spun on like a leaf in a vortex. I am Queen no longer. Nineteen years for naught. My princes are mere bastards and my princess likewise. No throne now for my son Edward, whom I laboured to bring forth in this same comfortless Sanctuary. She heard herself saying, in a queer rasping voice:

  ‘May I ask who will be King of England now?’

  ‘I am instructed to deliver a copy of this Act,’ he said, ‘It sets out the Titulus Regius – the Council’s findings and decision as to the crowning of our
sovereign. It is Parliament’s decree to the title of King.’

  Her fingers could not grasp the parchment. It slipped down, curling, to lie at her feet like the open horn of a trumpet Even then, the half-hidden words, plain and black, leaped to her eyes.

  ‘So Gloucester will be King!’

  She could not hear how her own wail echoed in the embossed vaultings above, and drifted, lonely, through the open window to where the river lapped and fretted. There was an overpowering drumming in her ears. Queens can be brought down. How many had said it, and how often? The Fiend had returned in glory, to mock and cheat her and persecute her. His weapon was the Act of Titulus Regius, defying her own enchanted blood.

  Grace Plantagenet stood outside the gate of the Sanctuary. A hard summer shower was falling, taking the starch from her spiked hennin and veil, and staining her gown. One or two monks passed in and out of the postern. Weary, disapproving of the constant upheaval about their demesne, they ignored her, going swiftly by with sandal-slap and the reek of incense and dirt from their habits. She tried to catch the attention of one; he looked sourly at her, muttered a benediction or a curse and went in, slamming the wicket behind him. To Grace’s left was the wall with its great raped hole, sketchily shored up with timber. The hole was spacious enough to admit slim Grace, but to what? Only a reprise of a painful scene, perhaps added fury, doubled unkindness. Even now that sudden assault beat at her brain, the more shocking for its very unexpectedness.

  She had been working on a tapestry of St. Simon and St. Jude, with her ear and eye alert for any movement or request, her heart beating in time with Elizabeth’s tumultuous heart. Elizabeth had raised her head, had studied Grace for several minutes. Then she had spoken, with quiet, savage anger.

  ‘You!’

  Grace had risen, eagerly, pushing the tapestry frame away

  ‘Go. Get you from this place, and out of my sight. Do not return’.

  The red eyes, the whiteness, had moved Grace to murmur: ‘Madame, you are ill. I pray you …’ and to receive the whiplash answer: ‘I am not ill. I am invincible. Get out of this house!’

  Then Elizabeth had risen, had said loudly to her cowering attendants: ‘I dismiss, this day, a bastard. I am done with Plantagenet bastards!’ To Grace she said in a low fury: ‘You bring me ill luck! Jesu! I should have seen it before.’

  Young Bess had spoken up bravely. ‘Madam my mother, do not turn away my father’s child, my sister by blood!’ and Elizabeth had silenced her. ‘Ah, God! Edward could sire only bastards. Be still, for you know naught of it!’

  Grace had gone, assuming a high dignity she did not feel, out through the grey arch and to the fringe of the frightening outer world. To the edge of a city thronged by turmoil where speculation roared like a milling sea. Taverns were thick with secrets; even the carved gables seemed to take on life, murmurously quivering with various allegiance. Loyalty to Gloucester, to Buckingham; to Tom Dorset, exiled in France; to Sir Edward Woodville, whose spy-ships ran free in the channel; to Lionel Woodville, who had retired to his estates, perhaps to pray; to Morton, silent in the fastness of Buckingham’s Welsh castle. And to another, whose unknown voice was a distant clarion, whose face was the gleam of a ghostly banner. In the alehouse certain men clashed tankards and whispered: ‘To the Dragon!’

  Grace’s gown was almost soaked with rain. She moved to stand beneath a projecting buttress. Everywhere people tramped about their affairs; merchants, clerks, hurried in and out of Westminster Hall, where the court was in session. Folk in fine wool, in rags, in velvet, were clotted about the entrance to the chambers. Pedlars and cookboys pranced about, bellowing their wares; beggars whined, fiddlers scraped. A tall, ebony-faced Moor went by with a monkey on his shoulder. Westminster clock spoke like Jehovah; the world rocked. A leering gargoyle spat a mouthful of rain down upon Grace and she shivered. Occasionally through the crowd came the flash of the Watch’s uniform. Grace saw herself arrested, declared a vagrant or worse and bundled into the Fleet, where Jane Shore, a branded harlot, lay by order of the Protector.

  ‘But I’m the daughter of a king!’ she said loudly. She sat down on a stone from the breached sanctuary wall and began to weep. Now, in all the ballads, a knight would appear. She looked up; there was only a band of urchins, with sly rotten-toothed smiles. One weighed a jagged stone in his hand. Another postured a bow, minced nearer. ‘Lady’s rich gown is wet’, suggested another. The oldest, a boy about Grace’s age, said softly: ‘My mother lusts for a gown like that!’ He had coal-black fingernails and the face of a pirate. They ringed her round, eyes bright, bare toes gripping the cobbles. She opened her mouth, sucked in air and dry panic. Behind her she felt the stone buttress, slippery with rain under her palms. The boys came closer. None of them saw the man approaching. His large purposeful feet slapped spray from the puddles, his broad face was crimson with wrath. He wore a tabard blazoned with a chained white Boar, and he was armed with knife and staff. The latter he used to good effect, laying about him, direct and sure. The clique bolted, heads clubbed bloody. A hand reached out for Grace.

  ‘Art harmed?’

  She shook her head. Holding her hand in his vast paw, he spoke to her in a dialect barely comprehensible, yet with the essence of kindness. He chided her for standing unescorted among the rowdy toils of Westminster. All the time his eyes appraised her dress, her white hands, her obvious gentleness.

  ‘Tha’ shall be taken to my lady,’ he said finally.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Thou. To the Lady Anne Neville, wife to my lord of Gloucester,’ he said, looking down with pride at the device on his tabard. Then she understood. This was one of the Yorkshire yeomen appointed as personal guard to Gloucester’s lady. Gloucester’s lady! She withdrew her hand from his.

  ‘I can’t go with you.’

  He looked closely at her face, murmuring how much she reminded him of someone, a sharp resemblance save for the eyes. She told him her name, and that of her father. His face became gravely decisive. He took her hand again.

  ‘Tha’ must not stand here one moment longer.’ He said, in his tortuous northern speech, ‘that my lord of Gloucester would be wroth at such things … his brother’s child crying in the road!’ He led her down towards the river. The rain died as they entered the boat; the current rocked them as they passed the high carved merchantmen anchored at every quay, the hundred petermen drawing in nets heavy with salmon and flounder. Supple clouds moved across the river, charmed, elemental shadows changing with each ripple. All the time the Yorkshireman held Grace’s hand, speaking only once, when he pointed out banners billowing damply from turret and fortress.

  ‘They are preparing for the coronation. London is ready. Soon, my lord of Gloucester will be King.’ Radiance flooded his face; Grace sat silent in the little boat.

  On the steps of Baynard’s Castle, home of the Plantagenets for centuries, bright-liveried guards stood like granite. Within the great hall, the walls were stiff with gay quarterings; over the fireplace banners proclaimed the heritage of Warwick together with the Griffin of Montagu, the Beauchamp Swan, and Gloucester’s Boar. Grace made a muffled sound, and pulled back; the broad hand led her on.

  ‘Come. Come to my Lady Anne.’

  As they ascended the stairs she felt a mood so powerful it was as if the walls spoke. An aura of frail, transient joy – a peak of unstable pleasure that swayed the senses. So tangible was it that she lifted her eyes expecting to see, above the solar door, a motto limned in gold, something that might say: All happiness is here. Welcome. Welcome to a joy that does not last!

  Outside the rain had ceased completely; the solar which they entered ran with fluid brightness streaming through the diamond panes. Anne Neville sat playing chess at a centre table. She raised her face; it was almost the face of a severely ill child; smooth and veined at the temples and completely guileless as if the sins and strategies of the world were without moment; as if the world itself were too fleeting for anything but tranquillities. As she saw
Grace, and as the Yorkshireman began his cumbrous explanation, she smiled very sweetly. She held an ivory man posed over the board; her partner was oblivious to all, pondering his play. All that was visible of him was a slender green velvet back, a fall of black hair and one elegantly hosed leg stretched out to the great danger of passers-by. Anne Neville’s smile grew broader; her small white teeth looked very bright between her pale lips.

  ‘I greet you well, mistress,’ she said. To Grace’s escort: ‘Master Walter, you did right to bring her here.’ And, to her absorbed partner, ‘Sir, leave the game, I beg you. Greet our guest!’ The chair flew back and he rose, smiling an apology, turned fully so that Grace saw him dark against the sun. The rippling brightness obscured his features; for a moment she was unsure. Then he took a step towards her.

  ‘Madame,’ he said hesitantly. ‘Why, Madame … Grace! Have you forgotten me?’

  ‘John,’ she said softly. ‘Lord John of Gloucester.’ He came closer, taking her cold damp hand to his warm lips.

  ‘This is good fortune!’ he said gaily, and looked down at her. She was confused. The last time they had met, he seemed such a little boy, a gallant little boy. As she did not speak he continued: ‘I fear you had forgotten me!’

  ‘You’ve changed. You are taller, bigger – grander!’

  ‘It is the archery,’ he answered proudly. ‘It stretches a man,’ and behind them Lady Anne said, laughing: ‘Then, John my love, you should be a giant, by reason of practising night and day!’

  ‘It is my father’s wish that I excel in arms,’ he said gravely. ‘Not only the longbow, but the axe …’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Anne, with an amused shudder. ‘No more talk of weapons for a while. Embrace your cousin, like a courtier!’