Figures in Silk

by Vanora Bennett

  Taking her cue from him, Isabel laughed too. Dickon made everything so easy.

  He kissed her forehead. She raised her face to his, but, still smiling at the enjoyable memory, Dickon stepped back unexpectedly, and said, in servile tones, “Your vessel awaits, milady,” and handed her down into the old boat. The water gurgled wildly around her, already nearly black, as the boat rocked and righted itself. The lantern at the back of the boat flickered, as if it was winking too.

  She looked breathlessly around. Was this his surprise? “And your boatman,” he added, stepping in after her. He took the oars.

  She drew in a deep gulp of wind. It was always like this: despair or euphoria, with nothing in between. The more she knew him, the more she realized it always would be. He enjoyed living by the skin of his teeth. She liked to think that was why she loved him with this desperate simplicity—with a pure need that still sucked the breath out of her body and left her awed by its power.

  He didn’t live with the solemnity of other princes, she thought; maybe because he hadn’t always been a prince. He’d been everything in the course of the wars: noble before he became royal, since Edward hadn’t grown up expecting to be king. Poor as well as rich. A winner now, but for years a loser. The uncertainty had left its mark; he still liked danger. She knew now that when she’d first met Dickon he’d just spent a year in hiding overseas with his brother. They’d only managed to escape England by a miracle.

  Lord Hastings had fought off the Lancastrians at the front door of the house where they’d been cornered; the king and Dickon escaped out the back. They’d found a ship, but had no money to pay for their passage. “We had no idea where we were going,” Dickon had told her once, stroking her face, but with his mind in the past,“and we had nothing but the clothes we stood up in. Thank God, Edward had a cloak lined with marten fur; the skipper took it instead of money.” He stopped; looked properly down at her; smiled wickedly. “Best argument I know for a good strong dark anonymous cloak, lined with something very expensive.”

  The cloak he was wearing now was lined with marten, too.

  He took it off and put it across her shoulders, under a big sky, shot 1 with wisps of flame- colored cloud. She sat very still on the passengers’ platform at the front of the boat, lined with mildewed cushions, snuggling into the heaviness of the cloak. It was still warm from the touch of his body. As he rowed them out into the current, she looked first at the sun sinking over the water, then, as he neatly turned the boat—wherever had he learned how to row?—at the muscles she could see working in his back and arms, through his plain shirt. The water gurgled around them. Dreamy and warm, she listened to his rhythmic, heavy breathing and the judder of oars against rowlocks. The light faded.

  He stopped rowing. He looked back at her, or perhaps at the end of the sunset behind her, with an expression she couldn’t read. “Beautiful,” he said softly, in a voice that made her shiver.

  He laid the oars carefully to rest inside the boat and shifted himself, too, onto the passenger platform where she was sitting.

  She leaned against him. There was a light sweat on his forehead, on his chest. There was hardly anyone else on the river this late. He pulled her to him in a suddenly tender embrace and let her mouth find his. “I’m willing to bet,” he whispered, very low, very mischievous, “that you’ve never done this before,” and he pushed her gently backward.

  She sank against the cushions. He pulled the cloak over both of them; she muttered, “You can’t; not here, on the river!” But he ignored what ever confused words she was whispering—rightly, as the way she was pulling him down onto her made it clear to both of them she didn’t mean them—and, under the cloak now covering both of them, began touching mouth to skin again.

  “Black cloak. No one can see us under it,” she heard him whisper; then, mischievously, “I think.” But by then she was beyond caring.

  By the time their rapid breathing had given way to laughter—by the time she’d sat up, pulling her clothes back together, with her hair streaming loose and a shamefaced smile, saying, in a breathless pretense at reproach that was nothing of the kind, “You really are the most sinful man I can imagine,” as he kissed the inside of her arm and answered, “And you the most abandoned woman I know—so, a good match”—they’d drifted half a mile downstream, and darkness had fallen in earnest.

  “O-o- oh,” he said quickly, assessing where they were; sitting back up at the rower’s bench, taking up the oars, and setting off back upstream. “This is where I’d like the real boatman back. Pity he’s off getting drunk on more money than he’s ever seen in his life.” He was humming under his breath as he rowed. She could see a flash of teeth every now and then.

  He looks mighty pleased with himself, she thought.

  As if intuiting her thought, he said gleefully: “Did you know, I’ve never done that before either?”

  But she just gazed at him, without questions; committing to memory this sliver of happiness, like the sliver of moon now visible in the sky, to comfort her in all the times when he wasn’t there.

  There was no hope she’d ever see more of Dickon than she did now. He was still as knife- sharp and whip- hard as the youth she’d first known—her own god of war made flesh. It was only his brother the king who’d got fat and self- indulgent.

  Isabel knew this as much from Jane as from Dickon. She liked the comfortable way Jane spoke of the king, who, over the years, had become more her friend than her lover. Jane’s confidences didn’t make Isabel think there’d be any point in revealing her own secret love to her sister. It was obvious that Jane’s cozy friendship had none of the perfect spare urgency of what Isabel felt for Dickon. Jane would never understand. Still, now Isabel had become so successful in the City that she didn’t need to compare herself with Jane anymore, she enjoyed laughing indulgently at 1 her sister’s wide- eyed stories. King Edward’s gut wobbling when he laughed at something Jane said. King Edward relaxing away from his demanding, exhausting, sharp- faced harridan of a wife, or chomping on a chicken, or enjoying letting Jane beat him at backgammon.

  Now that King Edward liked those simple pleasures too much to want to fight his own wars, he needed Dickon to do all his fighting for him. He knew his brother to be more than a hard- bodied fighter and inspired general. Dickon was loyal too.

  And that meant Dickon was always on the road, and always would be.

  As a reward for Dickon’s military successes in Scotland—the whole of last year an agony of ignorance for Isabel, while he was away campaigning—the king had just added to his brother’s already vast northern territories by granting him the county of Cumberland. Dickon was King of the North in all but name. He was happy. He’d never leave and come south. It was as unthinkable as the idea he’d once suggested: that Isabel might go and set up business in York. She’d just laughed: “What would I do in York?” Even if there hadn’t been her ever- expanding business in London and the Low Countries to think about, they both knew she wouldn’t want to live in the shadow of his wife and child. Not that she was jealous of his wife, but she hated him even to mention his son, Edward, who must be nine or ten. She felt the child, not the mother, to be her real rival; she didn’t want to think of his existence. They both tried not to complain of the shortness of their time together. This was all they could hope for. It had to be enough.

  Now the rumor was that the king would soon start another war on France. If he did, Dickon would certainly go. And Isabel would endure more of the helpless pain of waiting, knowing she’d only find out if he’d been hurt or killed through street talk, because 1 no one would think to tell her; why would anyone think she wanted to know? But before that began, for the next few months, while the war thickened like smoke before taking shape, he’d be coming to court; there’d be times—nights, half- days only, sometimes, but moments, at least, moments like this—to snatch at any price now so they could be remembered in the long wait later. If it meant lying to Alice Claver—still her mistress, forma
lly, although nowadays it was Isabel who really ran everything—then so be it.

  She had no qualms about that. The commission Jane had just got for her, to work personally for Princess Elizabeth, would be more useful than Jane could possibly have imagined. As long as Alice Claver believed her to be at the palace, she’d have no questions, ever, about Isabel going off to Westminster at short notice—where she could quietly see Dickon too.

  “Do you think,” she said, fishing for information about the shape her future would take, watching his back move, trying to sound casual, “you will be sent to France?”

  He didn’t answer at once. But an oar sliced wildly over the surface of the water, splashing both of them and jerking the boat sideways.

  He pulled it round; then, once his stroke was established again, said seriously, “I don’t know. Hastings wants to go all right.

  Spring’s almost here: the campaign season. But I can’t tell what’s on Edward’s mind.”

  She couldn’t see his face. His voice was coming from the shadows.

  “Of course, if I went and Hastings went, and we took a proper army, Edward would end up alone here with all his wife’s relatives,” she could hear him saying lightly, as if he might laugh, between gulps of air. “In a court crawling with Woodville woodlice.”

  Isabel snickered encouragingly. No one liked the jumped- up Woodvilles, all the on- the- make relatives who’d crept and married and slunk into power along with the commoner queen. Court was two factions: them, against everyone who hated them. Only Jane, prudently, kept in with both groups. One of Jane’s long-term admirers was, as ever, Lord Hastings, a leading light of the true nobility at court. Her other admirer, still, was Hastings’s bitterest Woodville rival, the pretty, pushy, blond Marquess of Dorset (Isabel wasn’t sure he was as faithful to his chaste love of Jane as Hastings was). Dorset was Queen Elizabeth Woodville’s son by her first marriage. His beery, bleary, insulting attempt to grope Isabel in a tent, long ago, had defined her feelings toward the entire Woodville clan. Now she wrinkled her face and muttered,“Ugh. Like Dorset . . . Jane still sees him, you know.”

  Dickon had laughed at the story of that fumble. And it was one of the pleasures of being with him—a childish plea sure, she knew, but one that went with letting herself be perfectly frank with her lover—that Isabel sometimes encouraged him to talk less than kindly about Jane. Jane’s overdressing. Jane’s idleness.

  Jane’s wish to twist men round her little finger. Jane’s belief that the world could run on nothing more than smiles and silliness.

  Isabel knew, deep down, that Dickon only joined in because she egged him on, and sometimes she was uncomfortably aware that he was more loyal to his brother than she to her sister. But then, his brother was the king, while her sister was . . . well, a royal mistress was still a whore, wasn’t she?

  Today, Dickon wasn’t going to be drawn into a spiteful conversation about Jane. She could see his head up in front, shaking sympathetically. But all he said was, “Ah, once a Woodville . . . you’ve heard Dorset told the king last week that Hastings was plotting to sell Calais to the French, haven’t you?” She laughed with him. Then he went on with his own thought, excusing his brother’s indecisiveness about whether to go to war on France: “Being left alone with a palace full of vermin like that would give me pause, all right. If I were Edward. He’s still weighing things up.”

  His voice fell silent. The only sound was the oars on the water.

  “I don’t mind,” he said suddenly, through the rhythmic splashing. “About France. I can’t go yet anyway. There’s something I’ve got to settle first, at home.”

  She heard the tightness in his voice now. This was what he was really thinking about.

  Ready to reassure, she asked: “What?” She wanted to know; but she never knew if she would still want to know once she knew more. His problems so often just reminded her of the gulf between their two lives.

  “A land problem,” he said. Voice hollow; oars steady. “In a way.”

  “What way?” she persisted, sharply now, sitting forward. It was important to her to understand him, however hard it sometimes was. She wanted to do what little was in her power to protect him. “Tell me.”

  As he began, she realized it wasn’t what her merchant mind would call a land problem at all. Dickon’s nephew, a child called George Neville, lived with Dickon at Middleham. And he was ill: fever; coughing blood; wasting. “I’m taking a physician north in the morning,” Dickon said. “It’s why I can’t stay longer. I’m worried he’s dying.”

  She murmured, neutrally. Sometimes it didn’t do to show your ignorance. She’d find out in a minute why, to an aristocrat, this was a land problem. She just had to let him tell.

  He did. George was the child of traitors. Because of the rebellion by his Neville father and uncle twelve years ago, the estates the boy might once have inherited had been confiscated. They’d been given instead to Dickon and his brother Clarence, because the king’s two brothers had Neville wives, and (after Clarence died, and Dickon got the rest of the lands too) the Neville estates had become the heart of Dickon’s northern domains. Dickon needed that land to keep the rest of the North under his control.

  But—and here was the rub—if little George Neville were now to die childless, the Act of Parliament that had given Dickon the lands also said that the lands would only be Dickon’s for his lifetime. His son, Edward of Middleham, wouldn’t inherit them. After Dickon’s death, they would go back to the Nevilles.

  “You see my problem,” Dickon said. He’d stopped rowing.

  He’d raised the oars out of the water, and was pushing down on them with taut arms. He was twisting his head back to look at her for guidance. “He dies—and it weakens my authority throughout the North, and loses my child half his inheritance.” He grimaced.

  “And he is dying. I can see.”

  She nodded. Quickly, to herself, she flicked through possible forms of comfort or advice she might offer. There was no point in expressing sympathy for the Neville boy’s suffering; she hadn’t heard any note of regret in that low- pitched exposition that suggested Dickon might enjoy living with him or miss his company if he passed on. And she couldn’t discuss Dickon’s own son’s prospects, even if she’d had anything useful to say. But she could hear her lover wanted a framework to plan by; he wanted her wits.

  “Who’s the doctor?” she said. As a Londoner, she knew physicians, at least.

  “Gigli,” he said.

  “The Venetian,” she replied thoughtfully. She knew Dr. Gigli sometimes tutored the little Prince of Wales and his brother Richard when they were at Westminster. She’d seen him at prayer at St. Thomas of Acre: he was sleek, with glittering eyes and a smooth jowl. The London Lombards all took their illnesses to him. “Well, he has a good reputation.”

  Dickon carried on looking steadily at her. It was too dark to be able to see the puckered brow or the chewed lower lip: the expression he wore when the burdens of leadership outweighed the pleasures. All she could see was eyes. But she read quiet hope in them; the closest he ever came to vulnerability. It made her heart swell to be needed liked this.

  She filled her voice with all the calm certainty she could. She leaned forward; she could just reach close enough to put a hand on his twisted near shoulder. He put his own hand on hers. “Well, take Gigli to the boy. See how he does,” she said, feeling the comfort of skin on skin, hoping it comforted him too. “Gigli may make a difference.”

  She let the warmth vibrate in her voice and linger in the air for a moment. Then she pressed on. Dickon was too sharp- brained to be satisfied with just that. “But if the boy really is dying, and there’s nothing Gigli can do,” she said frankly, “it’s still not an in-soluble problem.”

  It was his turn to murmur, as if waiting for enlightenment.

  “Look, the king’s just granted you the whole palatinate of Cumberland,” she went on persuasively. “He certainly doesn’t want your estates broken up. You hold h
is kingdom together. He’s going to need you even more soon—to fight in France. You’ll have to use that need. Talk to him while he plans the campaign, while needing you is uppermost in his mind. And make him promise then—soon—to intervene to protect your son. He’ll understand why. He’s your brother; he loves you. And he’s the king. He’ll find a way.”

  Slowly, Dickon nodded. In the lantern light she could see clouds clearing from his eyes. “Yesss,” he murmured, letting breath escape slowly from his chest, and already his voice was less tight. “I can see how the French campaign will help concentrate his mind . . .”

  He started rowing again; big, easy strokes, toward the shore.

  It was getting cold. Isabel pulled the cloak tighter about her, wishing she could get rid of the image behind her eyes: a child’s bony white face and pitiful black- ringed eyes.

  It was only when they were already at the jetty, and Dickon was leaning forward in the thickness of the night air, fiddling with the rope, that he spoke again. “Edward will help,” the black velvet voice said; and it had borrowed Isabel’s certainty.

  Aware that a parting was coming, but not wanting to make much of it, they talked only about inconsequential things on the way through the dark streets, already nearly empty so close to curfew. Dickon asked about Isabel’s meeting with the princess (“They’re good children, Edward’s,” he said, without especial warmth). They laughed at the terrifying appearance Queen Elizabeth Woodville had made during the fitting. Dickon said he’d walk up to the Tower from Catte Street now, and ask Hastings for a bed rather than go to his family home in London, Baynard’s Castle. Hastings would be amused to see him on foot, and to hear he’d rowed upriver like a boatman. Quelling her impossible wish to be able to follow him, Isabel told him about the deal she was proud of having made with Pieter Bruinvels of Antwerp for £45 of Lucchese black velvet for shipment next week.