All down the line folk were discreetly unsheathing daggers for the timeless privilege of taking a square of the royal cloth, for good luck, as a protection against king’s evil, and in sheer joy and reverence.
‘I cut the carpet at Queen Anne’s coronation,’ said the young woman softly. ‘But then she and Richard were crowned together.’ John’s cold hand tightened on Grace’s; nearer the flaring bray of trumpets sounded and suddenly out of the hanging mist came the procession. A great cheer arose, caps sailed into the air. An ancient man burst into tears, crying: ‘Bess! Jesu preserve you, Bess!’ Slowly, gently, the Queen began the long walk up to the Abbey door. Her sister Cicely bore her train. Bess wore a kirtle of purple velvet banded with ermine. Her shining wheaten hair, crowned with pearls and rubies, fell to her hips and rippled as she walked. Her face was pale and thin and serious. Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth’s daughter, silver and gold, she came graciously on; the mob erupted with delight. The pure profile, the glittering hair passed by, gone in an instant. Bright-eyed, the small boy turned to his mother.
‘Now!’ she whispered, and he ran forward, waving his dagger. Likewise did a hundred men and women, knives gleaming like fishes slipping through the mist. And the guard moved, too swiftly. The majority of them were Breton; they had never heard of the custom and were desperately afraid of their master’s wrath. They did not see the joy or the innocence of the crowd; they saw only knives and sudden movements. Unsheathing their weapons, they laid about them. The cheers, the laughter, turned to screams of anguish. Grace saw an old man clubbed, his delicate skull shattered; a woman trampled. There was the sound of splintering bone, and one rending shriek that rose above all other. The small boy, Robin, was impaled on a guardsman’s lance. Within a minute a dozen people lay dying, and the beautiful carpet was more red than white.
At the Abbey’s portal, the Queen turned and saw all. Cicely dropped her sister’s train and buried her face in her hands. All the Queen’s ladies were crying; Jasper Tudor rushed them into the porch. Grace watched the Queen go weeping from dead bodies to her coronation. Her own mind froze; she slid fainting into John’s arms.
She found herself lying on a tavern bench. John’s face was fogged and strange. He had been trying to dribble wine into her mouth; the bosom of her gown was soaked. She could hear the landlord cursing softly in the background.
‘Be still, my love,’ John said. She tried to smile; her face was stiff.
‘You were right!’ he said. She frowned. Objects came clearer, then blurred again as, remembering the massacre, she began to weep. ‘We must go away,’ he went on. ‘After today, I have had enough of Tudor’s England. We will leave at once.’
She sat up; her head spun, then quietened slowly. She nodded and rose, wiped away tears. ‘I’m ready.’
‘I must find horses and a boy to bear our goods,’ he said. He crossed to the landlord and spoke swiftly; the man: nodded and went away. ‘Then, a ship to carry us. Wait here for me.’
‘No!’ she cried. ‘I’ll come with you, don’t leave me.’
Seriously he looked at her. He said: ‘Never.’
‘Let us not return to Gould’s. Let’s leave everything. I have all that I need.’
‘You must take your pretty gowns,’ he said, smiling: ‘I shall have no more money once we are exiled. I shall need to attach myself to some Irish lord … come, love. I love you in your pretty gowns.’
When they returned to the butcher’s shop, Gould was there alone. He looked at them dourly. When John, stiffly arrogant, informed him that they were quitting the lodging, he only grunted, and began sawing at a haunch of venison on the counter. Hand in hand they went upstairs and entered the small room for the last time. Together they leaned from the window once more. Salazar stood on the corner, teaching his monkey a trick; he was absorbed and did not look up. John touched the dingy walls of the room, the crooked table, found a forgotten doublet in a chest. Everything was very quiet; Gould’s sawing and chopping had ceased. John sat on the viciously lumpy bed, and stroked its covers.
‘Sweet Jesu! I was happy here!’ he said softly. Then, without looking at her: ‘My lady. Such as you are given by God.’
Tears stung her eyes. She said shakily: ‘We shall be even happier. Look!’ Trying to laugh, she nudged the coffer containing her gowns. ‘I can’t lift it!’
‘The boy will be here soon,’ he said. He sat quietly, turning the ring upon his finger, looking at the floor. Restlessly Grace walked about. Paul’s clock struck its harsh remembered note. She turned and looked at John as he sat there, all darkness and light, with his pallor and his black hair, and the sad tempestuous eyes pensively veiled. Love filled her as she looked.
‘Oh, my lord!’ she began. There was a noise on the stair, steps forcefully, imperatively advancing. No baggage-boy owned such a tread, or wore mailed shoes, or carried halberds that slithered and struck upon the walls of the narrow staircase. There were at least four, faceless ones, ascending the stair. The small upper room shook. John stood up, crossed easily, deliberately, to where she stood aghast, and drew her to him, covering her face with kisses. He set his mouth on hers in an endless embrace, bending her body to his, almost engulfing it, protectively yet with desire, the wild regretful desire of the condemned.
A weapon crashed once upon the door. Still he kissed her, held her as if to merge her body finally and forever with his. Half-fainting again, she cried in her mind: He knew! He knew they would come for him; he knew and did nothing …
Then they were in the room; the bright Dragon blazons and the royal insignia; tall men, stooping beneath the lintel, disinterested men come by order of their sovereign. And behind them was Gould, peeping gloomily to see his work accomplished.
‘You are John of Gloucester, son of the traitor Plantagenet.’
He had withdrawn from Grace, and was standing respectfully apart. He was smiling.
‘I am the son of Richard, rightful king of England.’
‘You must come now,’ they said, sounding foolish.
‘The lady has no part of it, of course,’ said John. Still he smiled. They inclined their heads, and accepted this. They had their orders; Grace was invisible.
‘The charge is treason?’
‘Treasonable correspondence with Ireland.’ The pikes were hefted and set to attention with a crash.
‘Why did he wait so long?’ said John softly.
‘Come,’ they said. The question was irrelevant; one did not question divinity.
Formally John kissed Grace’s hand. ‘Remember me,’ he said. His eyes smiled as well as his mouth; he was full of tenderness. He was slipping away; the fog of destiny had him. He was gone. Strangely, he said: ‘My dynasty is damned. The wheel comes full circle. My lady, my love. Remember …’
Even when the door had closed and the footsteps had died, she could not move. She stood like a stone, gathering strength against the storm about to break in her. When it did, his smile remained, almost but not quite enough to make the moment bearable.
Although Cardinal Morton now had palaces and mortmains the length of England, he found it sometimes convenient to lodge at his old manor of Holborn. There, in the quiet rooms or the pretty garden with its strawberry beds, he could nod acquaintance to harder times. He sat in his parlour, while a serious-faced boy of nearly nine stood reading from a scroll on a lectern. Morton listened to the fluid Latin cadences approvingly. Thomas More, son of a Lincoln’s Inn judge, was the wittiest pupil ever to come the Cardinal’s way. The clear voice relaxed Morton; he was feeling his great age. There was still so much to do; to shape the Tudor dream, to instruct what should be remembered and what forgotten. He was annoyed when his clerk and gatekeeper knocked, entered, and knelt to whisper against the folds of the scarlet robe.
‘Oh, this is monstrous!’ cried Morton.’ ‘It is not fitting for women to enter these precincts. Send her away.’
Thomas More slipped from the lectern stool and left the room. He disliked to hear his master in ch
oler, even though this occurred infrequently.
‘Eminence,’ faltered the clerk. ‘Every day for weeks, she has embarrassed us.’ He flushed. When Grace wept, he did not know what to say; when she swooned, he was utterly put out, and let her lie moaning.
‘She speaks of going to his Majesty.’
‘Foolishness,’ said Morton quietly. ‘Very well. I will see her. No doubt she wishes to confess her sin. Are there no lesser men to give her an ear?’
He let her wait some minutes more while he occupied himself with the latest problem; the entry in York Civic Records, only lately brought to his notice. It was an old entry, dated 22nd August, two years earlier. He was slightly troubled by it. ‘This day was our good King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of this City.’ It was full time to stop such rot as this. And the herald, Rous, was due for an audience too; the Rous Roll must be amended for it too spoke glowingly of Henry’s predecessor. How should it be re-written? And now he was plagued by the bastard wench of Edward Plantagenet. He looked sternly at her when she was admitted. She did him obeisance.
‘Rise, child,’ he said impassively. Her lips left the great jewel on his finger and she got up. Her eyes were green a glass, contained a thousand years of sorrow, and discomfited him a little.
‘You are penitent?’
‘Penitent?’ An incredulous breath.
‘For your carnality during the past year with the traitor Gloucester. Remember the words of St. Jerome: God can do all things but restore virginity!’
She smiled a little. ‘Your Eminence,’ she said, ‘I come to you because you are of God. I wish to plead for John of Gloucester’s life.’
‘You are too late,’ he said stiffly. ‘He has been tried and found guilty. He is sentenced to death.’
Something shifted in the green eyes. Fleetingly he saw how she would be as an old woman; a stranger to smiles, still fair, but almost nunly. Somehow this made him feel older still.
‘I shall appeal to the King himself,’ she said quietly. Then he thought; she is mad, a heretic.
‘The King is not in London. The King sees no one.’ He picked up a quill, made a notation on Rous’s offending roll.
After a time she said: ‘When is the execution to be?’ and he told her, not looking up. When he raised his eyes, the room was empty. He sent again for Thomas More.
‘Divert me, Tom,’ he said. ‘I am weary.’
‘Alas, my lord.’ The boy blushed. ‘I have no talent for it.’
‘Nonsense.’ The fresh young mind was geared to storytelling, and untouched by the past thirty years of war. All More’s schooling had been directed by the accession of King Henry, the mystical union of Rose Red and White, like Christ and the Church. Brightly the boy said: ‘There is a new troupe of entertainers outside. They will do better than I.’
‘While he waited, Morton worried about the herald Rous’s roll. Such as he should be interrogated, sounded out. God knew how many little clerks there were, scratching the dangerous truth in hidden corners, fancying themselves chroniclers. Morton’s task was to achieve an ellipse, woven of thoughts, images, histories. Impossible to close the mouth of every secret scribe. Better to open them wider with a new tale. But how to bring the pattern to its full? So far the story was good – the shedding of infants’ blood – Black Will Slaughter was a fine invention, worthy of Chaucer’s genius … Yet there were too many who remembered Richard – the York epitaph exemplified this. Men lived longer these days, he thought, and despite all, found comfort in it.
The players entered and there was a most hideous hunchback among them. Clever, he told rhymes with tongue-torturing skill. He danced a little hornpipe. Yet freakish chance had loaded his body with a clubbed mass of bone; his arms were longer than his legs. Black flowing hair grew on his face.
‘Holy Jesu,’ murmured Morton, in wondering distaste, but he applauded the monster’s antics graciously. Then, suddenly, watching how, during a rest, the other entertainers ignored their wretched companion, illumination bloomed in the Cardinal’s mind. He called the hunchback over to the throne.
‘Why do they use you thus?’
The dwarf grinned. ‘Why, highness, behold!’ He bent double so that the misshapen hump moved beneath Morton’s eye. ‘I am touched by Lucifer – so men say!’
‘And are you?’ Morton’s heresy-sniffing nose dilated.
The hunchback raised clear eyes, his only beautiful feature. ‘No, lord,’ he said quietly.
Morton gave the dwarf a broad gold piece on parting. Now he knew how Rous should amend his Roll. He knew exactly.
‘Touched by Lucifer,’ he whispered, charmed. ‘Aye. Touched by Lucifer.’
Salazar was waiting for Grace when she came out of the Holborn mansion. He held two Arabian horses. Grace went and rested her head upon the Moor’s motleyed breast.
‘It is today,’ she said softly. ‘At noon.’
The monkey sprang to her shoulder. The Moor was crooning, a little hypnotic song stirred by the waves of an alien sea. He laid one long black hand upon Grace’s shivering head.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Upon Tower Hill. You must not go there.’
‘I must.’
‘It will bring you pain.’ Tenderly he looked down at her, so fair and small against his own dark mystery. She was his bright token, his proxy daughter, his special charm, and he, for months, her unknown amulet and guard.
‘You must not go,’ he repeated. ‘Look at the people!’
They were already hurrying through Holborn, dragging on gowns, eager for the dreadful joy, not far removed from love, of witnessing an execution. The apple-sellers were trundling their wagons through the City. The Londoners, the artisans, mercers, clerks and prentices, always the prentices, ran to watch, to feel their own necks secure and take comfort in vicarious death. John’s execution would propitiate each man’s especial god.
Salazar said, in his dreaming voice: ‘I went yesterday to the Tower.’
Broken, she said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you not take me?’
The stroking hand ruffled her hair, leaf-light. He thought of how he had found her, sitting mutely in the upper room without food or drink for three days; how he had carried her out through the stinking shop. How he had nursed her at his house, listening to her ravings, fed and restored her, talked softly through her anguish while she clung to his hand as her one anchor. He knew all her joys, her loyalties and griefs.
‘Did you see him?’ she whispered.
‘Nay, not I. None could. But he sent you this.’ He withdrew from his gold-laced pouch a tiny parchment scrap. She read from it, weeping.
‘My dear beloved, stay from me now. Remember that you are Plantagenet, accursed by the witch. Guard yourself. Sweet Christ Jesu send you happy. Written at the Tower by my own hand.’
His hand, the hand of delight, whose writings, like black sea-waves, bound her closer and closer, to what? A twitching body, a lifeless, severed head. She would go to Tower Hill. With fortune, the axe might also find her neck.
‘Come, Salazar, let us follow the people!’
He nodded, lifted her on to one of the horses, where she sat, swaying, her head shrouded by mist, her outline blurred. Taking the other mount’s bridle, the Moor began to walk. A tavern bush, threaded with dried flowers and ribbon, loomed to the left. He looked at Grace; he was with her in this last tribulation; he knew what he must do.
‘It is only eleven,’ he said. ‘A drink, first. A void, to warn you.’
He took her down, wrapped his long arm about her and guided her into the deserted inn. He pressed her down into a high-backed settle. She leaned her cheek against the wood. It smelled of cinnamon and musk, a scent lately left by some wealthy wife. Its smell was the smell of grief, its black oak the colour of death. There was a little knot in the grain, and into this she ground her cheek until the bruise broke and blood started. Good. Good pain.
Salazar stood before her, his vastn
ess blotting out the little window over her head. He held a silver cup. It smoked and was aromatic. Her hands steadied about its warmth. She tasted the cup; an unfamiliar taste, it was writhing-sour, like swallowing a serpent.
‘Drink,’ said Salazar sweetly. The monkey chattered and hung upside down from the back of the booth.
‘Drink, doña.’
Salazar, tall, and wavering like a tree under storm, stood before her. Her head felt heavy, her eyes pained from the quivering colours of his dress. Her gown was creased and her feet had been arranged neatly upon the settle. The tavern swam. With difficulty she looked past the Moor’s head to the window. Through the lattice she saw one star, steadfast and burning bright. She thought: it is the end of the world. Night has come in the morning. She felt a weightless warmth in the crook of her arm. The monkey was there, fast asleep.
‘It’s over,’ said Salazar. ‘All over, little one. Quick, and noble.’
She tried to speak, and failed.
‘He was not tortured,’ said Salazar. ‘Nor was he despoiled. One stroke, swift and clean. He smiled on the scaffold. My faith is not yours; yet who knows that we do not all cheat death?’
Then he gathered her to his coloured breast and rocked her, humming his foreign song as if he did not care, for this was the way to heal her; no commiseration, no crying against what cannot be mended.
‘Now,’ he said at last. ‘My time here is done. But you?’
‘I do not know,’ she answered. ‘I do not care.’
‘You have a place,’ said Salazar. ‘Tell me where, and I will take you there.’
‘I have nowhere, no one, nothing.’
‘Impossible.’ His ear-rings gleamed in the candlelight. The inn was filling up; gossip drifted among the high-backed stalls.
‘Did you love none but him?’ he asked gently. ‘No man, woman or child?’
Within her purse, Grace’s fingers cracked on the last letter. Plantagenet, cursed by the witch. And his words, returning like ghosts: The wheel comes full circle! She thought: I have been blind, uncaring, utterly ignorant. That dragging love I felt – it is turned to gall. My only love is dead, headless – accursed like the whole of York and Plantagenet. I have loved evil – the evil of Elizabeth.
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