She got up. Lit a candle from the embers of her fire. Her fear took shape.
With the king dead, what would happen to the silk- weaving contract? And the house?
Her mind flew north, to wherever Dickon was. If only he were here. If only he could advise her.
Biting her lip, she dropped to her knees.
Isabel went to see Jane early in the morning. Anne Pratte told her to—“She’ll want to see you,” she said, without a hint of the leer that would have made Isabel refuse—and walked with Isabel to Old Jewry again.
Once they were out of the house, Isabel asked, as plainly as she could: “Is our contract with the king still valid now he’s dead?”
Anne Pratte reacted equally calmly. “We don’t know,” she replied, looking ahead. “Alice thinks not.”
So they’d talked about it already, Isabel thought, with unwilling admiration. There were still things she could learn from them; they had the experience she didn’t of living in turmoil.
She felt Anne Pratte’s claw of a hand on her arm. “But no one will stop paying yet,” the soft little voice went on. “Everything will just go on as it is, out of inertia. And once things get settled the new way, if they don’t go our way, you’ve got your relation with Princess Elizabeth now. You can ask her to help. She’s the king’s sister: that’s got to count for something.”
Isabel persisted: “What if Goffredo’s already on his way?”
“Alice wrote to him yesterday; told him not to hurry until things are more settled,” Anne said, with none of the despair Isabel was feeling showing in her voice. “We’ll know better once everyone stops running round like a bunch of headless chickens.”
She squeezed Isabel’s arm. “Have faith,” she said. “I’m always telling you that. And don’t think about it now; there’s too much else to worry about.”
Isabel nodded, partly reassured by Anne’s confidence, more by the private faith she was placing in Dickon. Anyway, Anne was right: she could do nothing about it now.
Making an effort to put it out of her mind, she looked around.
There were too many people in the streets. Even if the markets were open, a lot of people were, like herself and Anne, not at work; instead they were sorting things out so they could face some event they hadn’t foreseen if it came suddenly upon them.
There was an air of purpose in the wet streets: the concentration of minds of house holders thinking what they could eat if there was no fresh food for sale; how many pickled eggs were left from Lent; how much dried fish; how much firewood; how much flour?
Joan Woulbarowe, humping a bag of kindling back to her room, stopped for long enough to hiss at them: “Can you believe it? They say the Woodvilles went into the king’s bedchamber while he was still lying dead on the bed and stole all his money and jewels. The Marquess of Dorset. Filthy carrion.”
“All I can say is, let’s hope the Duke of Gloucester gets here before there’s any more of that,” Anne Pratte said sententiously.
“He’s our best hope now. He’s straight, at least. And properly royal. It’s high time someone banged all their heads together and set things straight.” But Joan had already dived off down a dank alley with her load. Only Isabel—whose nighttime prayers had been for news that Dickon was on his way south—was left to hear. And she said nothing. She just looked hastily away, in case Anne Pratte’s sharp eyes saw the hope that Dickon’s name awoke in her heart.
Jane's door opened before Isabel even had time to knock.
Jane, dressed but with her head bare, looking pale, drew her sister quickly inside. “I’m so happy to see you,” she murmured, and Isabel saw her eyes were full of honey before Jane put her arms around her sister in a tight embrace. “Thank you for coming back.”
Jane clung to her. “Don’t think badly of me,” her voice said, from Isabel’s shoulder, through a hot cloud of hair. “I’ve always loved him. It’s mad; but I’m so happy.”
Isabel kissed the messy beauty of that hair. “I understand,” she whispered.
Jane looked up through it, shyly. “Do you?” she said. She must have seen forgiveness. Then, “Come in,” she added in a more ordinary voice. “Will Hastings is here.”
He was eating bread and cheese in the great hall. His buckler was propped up against the bench. He put his food aside, got up, and bowed when he saw Isabel. He was thinner than she remembered, with a silvering at the temples she hadn’t noticed yesterday. But he didn’t have the look of anger on him that she’d seen yesterday; the look that might also have been fear.
“Mistress Claver,” he said formally.
“My lord,” she said formally back; but her eyes were signaling her acceptance of the sight of him at her sister’s table. “Please—eat.”
Then he grinned at her; a return to the straightforwardness she’d liked in him before. Still standing, he picked up his hunk of bread and bit into it again.
Jane had woken Hastings up when she’d slid back into bed at dawn. “Your man’s been,” she said. “I gave him your letter. He had this for you.”
It was the letter he’d hoped for from Dickon, promising loyal support for Edward’s son and backup for himself. It calmed him; banished his terror; made him himself again.
Now, looking at Jane’s sister—that oddity, the girl who looked almost as pretty as his love but whose mind was a merchant’s countinghouse—he found he was able to smile.
“I’ve just had word from His Grace of Gloucester,” he told her, his words muffled by his mouthful. “He’s holding a memorial Mass for His Majesty at York now. He’ll be on the road again this afternoon. He’s moving south.”
He was pleased to see her put a hand to the table, as if to steady herself; to see the sharpness of relief on her face. She’d tell people. She’d spread the word in the City.
He said, faster now: “It will take him a while to get to London; there are a lot of cities to pass through and a lot of Masses to say. But he’s sworn loyalty to the new king. He’s written to Council to say he’d swear loyalty, if God forbid it should ever be needed, even to a girl ruler. That should calm the crowds here.”
The princess was frizzed inside the cloth- of- silver gown her mother had decided she should wear for her brother’s coronation. She hadn’t said a word since Isabel arrived. She wasn’t even looking at Isabel, who was kneeling before her, setting her hem.
But Isabel knew her ways better now, and didn’t feel humiliated by being ignored. The princess was staring through the window, to where her mother, thin and tense in black velvet, was conferring, soundlessly, with the Marquess of Dorset. Isabel sneaked a look at him too. He was still as honey- blond as Jane, but he looked as anxious and angry as Hastings had last night.
They’re not in grief. They’re terrified, Isabel thought. Looking up at the princess, she also thought, No wonder she’s so quiet; those two are enough to give anyone nightmares.
“Your Highness,” she said, “they’re saying in London that the Duke of Gloucester has sworn loyalty to His Majesty your brother.”
She wanted to reassure the troubled little soul she guessed at behind those blank eyes.
She went on: “They say he’s even pledged that, if God forbid His Majesty your brother were to die, he would swear loyalty to you if you were to inherit the throne.”
Isabel held her breath.
Slowly, Elizabeth looked down. For a moment, Isabel was appalled by the utter coldness she saw in that young face. She’d been mad to open her mouth. She’d be asked to leave, just when she might really need the princess. She’d spoiled everything.
Then she realized the princess was crying. Her face wasn’t moving. But there were gleaming trails running down her cheeks.
In a choking voice, the princess said, “But Her Majesty my mother hates the Duke of Gloucester. She says he wants to destroy her and all her blood. Her brothers. My brothers. Me.”
Isabel didn’t know how to answer, she was so astonished. Was that really what the child was so sc
ared of? Dickon? She took hold of the limp little royal hand in front of her eyes and muttered,“There, there,” and, “Nothing bad will happen,” and, after a while, when nothing terrible had happened to her, “What people are saying is that the duke will set everything straight.”
Eventually her confidence transmitted itself. She felt an answering pressure from the hand she was holding. Elizabeth swallowed, and sought her eyes. “Is that really what they’re saying?” the princess asked in a whisper. Then: “Is that what you believe?”
Isabel nodded, with relief prickling and bubbling through her.
She hadn’t spoiled everything, after all; the princess was actually opening up to her. Elizabeth began shaking her head, though Isabel couldn’t tell whether she was indicating disbelief or was just unsure how to remove the tears from her face. Quietly, Isabel passed her a rag. The new king’s sister wiped her face and blew her nose. Gradually, the tears stopped.
Isabel had one more task in Westminster. On her way home, she slipped into St. Stephen’s Chapel and joined the rest of the muddy worshippers lining up to prostrate themselves before the embalmed king’s coffin. They were still muttering about how Dorset had stolen his jewels and money on his deathbed. Perhaps it was true. She looked into Edward’s upturned face, wiped of its lazy charm, with the handsome features now as meaningless as a statue’s. She wondered at its uncanny stillness. Thank you, she thought, kissing the ground; not thanking the slab of flesh here but the live king she remembered—the man whose grace toward merchants had been translated, in her particular case, into almost unimaginable generosity. Praying that Edward’s generous contract with her would be honored by his son.
Praying for Dickon to get here quickly and make her silk dream safe for the future. Then, just praying for Dickon to get here.
In the days that followed, Isabel’s confidence that Dickon would come and make everything all right seemed to spread to other people.
The king was buried quickly (his body wasn’t well enough preserved to wait until the new king, or the Duke of Gloucester, made their separate entrances to London). The markets went back to work as usual. Apart from an early rumor that the Woodvilles had tried to seize the navy, it seemed even the courtiers were suspending their feud, while waiting for normality to return in the shape of a new king.
The only tears Isabel still saw for the dead king after that were the surreptitious ones shed by the princess at later fittings, while her coronation gown was adjusted. Isabel was gentle with Elizabeth; she might need her soon. “Get your grief out, you’ll feel better,” she’d murmur, while the princess stood, ramrod-straight, as salt water flowed from her eyes.
There was summer in the air. Londoners were reassured enough to dance at the maypole on May Day. Isabel and Alice and the Prattes walked through the crowded streets, licking pork fat off their fingers, watching the dancers, and listening to the hopeful talk. The king will be here any day now. The duke will be here any day. We’ll have a coronation before the month is out. Have faith.
11
So strong a hold had the idea taken that the Duke of Gloucester was the kingdom’s best chance of safety and order in the transition of power ahead that the gatemen at Westminster didn’t even look worried, the morning after May Day, by the story they were telling. A crowd of gate house visitors were listening as Isabel walked in off the boat.
While most of the country had been innocently dancing at the maypole, the Duke of Gloucester had swiftly marched his army cross- country—and captured the king. Gloucester and his friend the Duke of Buckingham had arrested the two Woodville uncles traveling with the King. They’d announced that Earl Rivers and Richard Grey had been plotting their murder. The Woodvilles and the king’s chamberlain, Thomas Vaughan, were being sent to Pontefract under armed guard.
“He’s a man of action, the Duke of Gloucester,” the guard said admiringly. “No nonsense about him.”
His sidekick said: “Time to take all those Woodville heads off , if you ask me. Did you hear about Dorset, just going and helping himself from the king’s casket before the man was even dead?”
He drew a finger happily across his throat. There was a general murmur of approval.
The head guard leaned over to Isabel, who was still trying to take the story in. “So I don’t know what you’re here for, Missis, not today,” he said, enjoying her look of confusion. “You don’t think your princess is still in there, do you?” He shook his head with gusto. “Oh, no . . . her mum’s much too fly. She’s a Woodville, isn’t she? She was off over the road to the abbey and sanctuary, children and all, as soon as she heard. In the middle of the night. A right old upheaval it was too.”
Isabel walked toward the twin towers of the abbey with her head spinning.
She didn’t know what to make of it. Her doubts and fears came rushing back. Could it be right? Had Dickon really been in danger of being murdered? What was he up to?
It was easier, for now, to concentrate on what she could do here. Queen Elizabeth Woodville would be at the abbot’s house, where she’d lived in sanctuary once before, during the Warwick rebellion, while her husband was in hiding overseas. The queen had given birth to her son Edward in that house; the boy who was now king. Princess Elizabeth might even remember being a toddler cooped up there in voluntary captivity. How frightening it must be to be back.
It was unlikely the panicking Woodvilles had taken Elizabeth’s coronation robe with them as they fled across Westminster. It was more than unlikely that the princess would want a fitting now. But all those quiet tears the princess had been shed-ding since her father died had left their mark on Isabel’s heart.
Even if there was no work she could do, she thought, she should at least go to her royal client and offer comfort.
She was dreading seeing the fear on the girl’s face, though. So it was a relief, as she turned the next corner, to see the more familiar form of Will Caxton in the distance. He was listening to a mar-2 ket woman, who was gesticulating excitedly as she talked; then, nodding his head up and down, clearly alarmed, he bought all the bread in her basket and began to shovel it into the already bulging leather sack on his shoulder. She quickened her pace, surprised to realize how fast her heart was beating, and half shouted, “Will.”
Breathlessly, he fell into step beside her, half trotting to keep up. “Have you heard?” he said. His eyes were round. “Earl Rivers. My best client. A prisoner.”
She darted a look at him. She hadn’t realized he’d see it like that. Of course he would.
“They’ll kill him, won’t they?” Caxton said, lost in his own worry. “Gloucester will.”
Isabel said, falteringly: “But Rivers was going to murder the Duke of Gloucester . . . they say . . .”
“They say,” Caxton spat. “Gloucester says, you mean. But he would, wouldn’t he?”
That wasn’t at all what she wanted to hear. Not from Will, whose advice she always asked, whose judgment she trusted. It crystallized her vague disquiet into a definite shape. Feeling sick inside, she stopped walking. She stared at him, and said, “You think it’s a lie?”
“I think he’s got murder in mind,” Caxton replied, as if surprised she’d even bother to ask. “Of course he has. Why wouldn’t he? He’s an ambitious, bloodthirsty brute. Always has been. And there’s no one to stop him now.”
She shook her head.
Caxton looked hard at her; she could see his alarm turning to anger. “Look, I know everyone’s been carry ing on recently as if he’s the Messiah made flesh,” he said. “Though God knows why.
But you’re not that stupid. You know as well as I do what he is.
Who do you think murdered the Duke of Clarence? And old King Henry?”
She shook her head again, refusing to acknowledge his words—those were old rumors he was repeating, nothing more—but feeling the panic inside her flex and bite.
Caxton said, doggedly, “He’ll kill Rivers, I’m telling you. And now he’s got the king in his clutches
, who’s to say he won’t kill him too?”
Feeling so anguished she could hardly control her tongue, she mumbled, thickly, “No,” and “You’re wrong, I’m sure you are.”
Will Caxton drew himself up: a tall, stringy angel of righteousness. He said: “Forgive me, my dear, but how can you be sure?”
To Isabel’s astonished horror, she felt her own eyes fill with tears and her shoulders start to shake. She put her hands over her eyes. “Because I know him,” she whimpered through her tears.
“And I know he’s not . . . not . . .” Then the sobs engulfed her so she couldn’t go on. But Will Caxton had quick reflexes for an elderly man. Before she knew where she was, before she’d even had time to take in the brief look of utter surprise in his eyes, he had his arms around her, and a kerchief at her face, and was murmuring, “Don’t cry, now,” and “No wonder, our nerves are all on edge,” and, as he steered her gently into the tavern at the road-side, “What do you mean, you know him?”
Will Caxton didn't say anything for a while after she’d stumbled it all out, through a storm of sobs: the snatched meetings; Dickon’s fiercely practical good nature; the straight- as- a-die honesty of him. Will just sat with an arm around her and clicked his tongue. After a while, the torrent subsided. She sniff ed, and wiped her eyes and nose.
When she finally dared look up, through puff y eyes, he was gazing at her with a half- smile on his lips and his head rocking, very gently, up and down. “Oh, you Lambert sisters,” he murmured ruefully. “You kill with a glance, both of you, don’t you?”
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she muttered, with her heart racing again as the foolishness of what she’d done sank in. “You won’t tell Alice, will you? Or Jane?”
He shook his head. There was a great kindness on his face; a look like love.
Even though a part of her felt horribly embarrassed, she realized her confusion was mixed with relief. Will wasn’t judging her harshly. And she’d been so lonely with her private thoughts about Dickon. It was good to have a friend she could trust.
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