The Rose of Rouen

1463–78

The Rose came to London, full royally riding.

Two archbishops of England they crowned

the Rose King.

Almighty Lord! save the Rose, and give him

thy blessing.

Edward IV’s Coronation Song: Anon.

King Edward the Fourth awoke early on a fine summer’s morning. He was tickled out of a pleasant dream by the sun’s rays probing a chink in the bedcurtains. For some moments he lay stretching his long limbs and trying to recapture the dream’s fleeting savour, but it was already gone, where all dreams go, back into a world of false joy. None the less, its essence was sweet enough to bring a smile to the King’s face, a radiance that passed over the strong chin and sensual mouth until it reached the blue eyes and lineless forehead. He stretched himself to the full until his six feet four inches were taut and glowing; he flung out one hand to caress the damask sheet beside him. Now, in warm and sensuous morning, was the time to welcome a woman’s body with searching fingers. The bed’s other half was barren, however, so he abandoned these thoughts. He moved his golden brow into the narrow path of sunlight and lay still. Youth and strength bubbled up in an almost unbearable flood. He was King of England and Ireland, and, more significantly, he was twenty-one years old.

Beyond his curtained feet he could hear his esquires snoring. They whistled and groaned; his lips twitched in amusement. Sluggards all! He would have them out hunting, straight after Mass. The sombre courtiers too; he would see them horsed and running through briars and bogs, after fox or boar or stag, consummating his own life-lust in their discomfort. He bore them no ill-will, though; he loved them. They had earned his love, through their loyalty to York. They were in the main older than he. He thought on them briefly; Chancellor George Neville, Bishop of Exeter, a powerful, strong-spoken man; John Tiptoft, Constable of England, with his bloody-humoured dedication to duty; Lord Hastings; the Chancellor’s brothers, John Neville, Marquis of Montagu, faithful and fierce, and Richard, Earl of Warwick. Warwick, the King’s protector and mentor. He who had cloven stoutest during the last few perilous years, and who, by his own acknowledgment had set the crown upon the sovereign’s head.

Yes. He loved Warwick, no question of that. By force of arms, by strategy and determination, and by a modicum of luck, Warwick had achieved for York’s son what York himself had failed to do. Edward was grateful. Yet his sleepy smile faded a trifle when he remembered that he had promised Warwick an audience in the State Chamber that morning. This would undoubtedly delay the hunting expedition. Concourse with Warwick was inevitably a lengthy affair; matters of state and policy were all meat for his painstaking discussion and advice sprang readily to his lips, as if he still considered Edward his pupil. God’s Blessed Lady! thought Edward suddenly. I am the King! Now pupil can bid master come and go!

Although there were facets in Warwick which brought out all Edward’s obstinacy, which could be considerable, they were joined by blood. Family ties (the King’s mother, Cicely Neville, was sister to Warwick’s father, the dead Salisbury) and the sword had brought them closer than brothers. In hard weather and pitiless conditions they had achieved the impossible. Warwick had embraced the future king, a fierce, fatherly embrace, after the battles of Towton Field in Yorkshire and Mortimers Cross in Herefordshire. Mortimers Cross: Edward’s face sobered as he recalled his vision there. He had scarcely believed it, then; even now he found it incredible. But others had seen it too. In thought, he was back in the battle tent, rising on the morning which, had he but known it, would give him victory. Victory over the French whore, her bastard son and Henry, that barren twig of Lancaster. He had staggered, sick with cold and sleep, through the tent-flaps, his harness, as he put it on, like pieces of burning ice. His heart was low, not through fear but at the prospect of another day’s march, snatched meals, hurried decisions, frustration. Then, more from habit than grace, he looked towards heaven, and saw – three suns. Not one, but three! The men-at-arms, at whom he clutched, crying of his discovery, had seen them too. They swore it. Shattered, inspired, he looked so long upon the fiery triumvirate that it remained imprinted on his eyeballs for hours afterwards. Throughout that day, when nothing could go awry, the day that became truly and irrevocably his.

Blessed be God who sent that sign. He muttered it, lying naked and warm in the great bed, whose hangings bore witness to the miracle, being embroidered with his new device, the rose en soleil. A rose within a sun in splendour, for was he not acclaimed the Rose of Rouen, place of his birth? At his coronation (a hurried affair, with less magnificence than he would have wished) they presented him with an anthem versed accordingly by which he had been deeply moved. He was the White Rose incarnate, the only Rose. So warming were these thoughts that his fleeting twinge of impatience at Warwick’s ceaseless counselling vanished.

Just then, something unknown touched off an echo of his lost dream. There had been a woman’s face, not young, but fair. The lips had moved constantly, and he had struggled vainly to catch at some vital intelligence. Watching those red lips with the lines like parentheses around them, he had felt a queer lift of excitement. He had seen the woman before, actually in waking hours, and her speech then had been equally compelling. Always drawn to older women, he could look on this one strangely without lust, but with a deeper fascination, as if her unheard words held the mystery of life. Who the devil was she? He scratched the night’s gold growth on his chin. Recollection came flooding. He spoke aloud and laughed, and his esquires awakened hastily.

‘My lady of Bedford! Certes, the lady Jacquetta!’

Pleased, he equated the dream and its reason. Only yesterday he had been re-reading the letter from that same lady, one dated the spring of two years earlier, in which she begged a royal pardon for her husband, herself, and the whole Woodville family. He had sent for this Lancastrian lady straightaway, thinking to rebuke her for her years of treachery. To follow the example of Warwick at Calais, when he had railed at Sir Richard Woodville and the young Anthony, calling them knaves unfit to speak with those of the blood. And Jacquetta had come, very cool, modestly dressed, to confound him at his palace of Westminster.

It was not only her eloquence but something in her eyes that lingered on her mouth. An air worn by soothsayers; a mystical immunity. A warning to cherish her. Whatever it was, before the audience was half done he found himself granting a pardon to all Woodvilles everywhere, and moreover, bestowing upon Jacquetta of Bedford an annual stipend of 300 marks, with 100 livres in advance. The fathomless eyes had warmed like the red embers of a gypsy-fire. Gracefully she vowed her duty. Before leaving she had said, turning to gaze at his antlered trophies on the wall:

‘There is good hunting at Grafton, your Grace. In Whittlebury Forest the boar excels. We would deem it honour…’

Bowing those eyes, that mouth, in a deep obeisance, she had left the words trailing mid-air, together with her perfume, musk and jasmine.

He had not spoken of this to Warwick, who would rage at the hated name of Woodville. Yet he had fully intended, one day, to disclose his reason for distributing this bounty. He had not disclosed it; because there was no reason. The Duchess’s eyes had guided his hand, his seal, had left him ruefully baffled. But what had she told him in the dream? More and more he longed to know.

As the esquires drew back the curtains and bowed, sleep still cracking their joints, he recalled that he had never taken up the Duchess’s invitation. Very soon after it had been extended, Margaret of Anjou had set about keeping him busy again. What a dance that vixen had led them, with her capture of Alnwick and Bamburgh, with her Scottish rebels piping for the King of England’s head. Daft Harry had been with her again, doubtless singing and talking to himself, as he had been discovered after the last battle of St. Albans, with its frightening rout. The tide had turned though, no doubt of it, although Margaret still hissed from the shallows. This was probably what Warwick wished to discuss. More arrays, more deploying of force. England must be kept secure from the swords of France and Lancaster.

The henchmen knelt, and Edward muttered a benediction, while swift visions crossed his inner sight. His father’s head on Micklegate. His own pledge, under the starry banners of Christ in Majesty at Fotheringhay, to avenge that pitiful straw-crowned face, the staring eyes of young Edmund, the blood-stained cheeks of Salisbury. He had honoured them all in a Month’s Mind ceremony of remembrance; his brothers, Richard and George had been present. Tall, arrogant George and poor sickly Dickon, who was another reason to cherish Warwick. Dickon was Warwick’s sole charge, and now learned the ways of urbanity and nurture at the Earl’s bleak castle of Middleham.

He sprang from bed, and the gentlemen rushed upon him with rosewater and herbals. A lutanist appeared as if from the air, singing a sacred summer lay. From a side table pages removed the Night Livery, the bread and wine placed in case the king should hunger. And still the dream’s essence remained with Edward, giving him good temper and brilliance. He smacked the esquires on the back, tossed the morning cup of ale down his throat. They dressed him and held the mirror for his approval: satin and velvet in loyalty’s blue, with the collar of York, suns and roses alternating in beaten gold. He shone, spare and robust as a god. He liked the image.

Singing and praying, they preceded him to the chapel. Warwick was already in his stall with others of the blood and the principal councillors. Edward strode the nave, inclining his head to some visiting Burgundian knights. They in their turn were admiring the new-painted walls and roof of blue and gold, the repaired rood-screen in holy arbutus wood. Edward, appalled by the dinginess of Daft Harry’s court, had made many changes. He strode on and the Burgundians saluted him. To Burgundy he owed his brothers’ lives. He had said so to Warwick, and strangely, the Earl’s response had been lukewarm. For Warwick had lorded it in Calais and, Edward was privily informed, had corresponded with Louis of France. And Louis would strip and burn Burgundy without a second thought. Yes, Warwick was loyal, but also powerfully ambitious. Kneeling on a gold-cloth prayer stool, Edward mused on loyalty. The Sanctus bell rang, he crossed his breast and thought: Warwick would never betray me. He has a stake in England, and he has charge of my youngest brother. He is Plantagenet. Yet he dubs himself a maker of kings and this new-made king must rule, with or without his approval. The choir’s voice, like glittering rain, trembled among the gold and blue. And from somewhere lost and far came the old mysterious echo: ‘There is good hunting at Grafton, your Grace.’

The King shivered, blown by an alien wind. He lifted his face from the kiss bestowed on the Book, and looked about him. Nobles surrounded him, their lips moving gently in holiness. Women, too. One, though missing not a word of the breviary, kept her beseeching eyes fixed upon him, and under that look all his fair humour fled. Dame Elizabeth Lucey. Ah yes, my dame. Once you were all I ever desired. He glowered at her over his missal, as if to send the words winging across the aisle. Dame, your husband may have died in battle for my cause, but the arms you offer bring weariness, where once there was joy. Can you never let me go? Somewhere, nurtured by his bounty, were two children. Dame Lucey was lovely, but so wanton, so easy. Once her body had pleased him; now it was a familiar manor, its turrets blasted, its standards fallen. And still her eyes reproached him daily, as surely as the incense, wafting, threatened him with a royal sneeze.

He did sneeze; a gusty, roaring explosion that echoed satisfyingly around the nave. Warwick’s eyes slid sideways. Perchance, Edward thought, amused, he is alarmed for my health. I have never ailed, save for the one bout of measles – and that in the middle of an array! But that was witchery; the Frenchwoman laid me low with a curse.

Elizabeth Lucey stared no longer; her downcast eyes appeared to weep. When would women learn that naught could hold a man once desire was dead? Another face rose to haunt him – saintly and more beautiful than Dame Lucey. He shuddered. That was yet another secret from Warwick, to be concealed at all costs.

‘May the almighty and merciful God grant us pardon, absolution and remission of all our sins.’ Dutifully he muttered, eyes closed, thinking: Eleanor. My greatest folly. Warwick shall never know about Eleanor.

There were the usual rolls for signature in the chamber filled with heralds, notaries, clerks. Warwick stood close; Edward experienced a familiar satisfaction when the tall Earl was forced to look up into his King’s eyes. Together they dealt with the day’s business, Edward signing with flourishes, and tossing parchments swiftly to the Master of the Rolls for the Great Seal’s imprint. Only when the representatives of the City of London came forward did his haste abate. He embraced the gildsmen and burgesses, his beloved citizens. These were his supporters, and the purveyors of England’s lifeblood. These were the men who through their wool and grain and fish would replenish the debt-ridden Privy Purse, legacy of King Henry, and make England a land once more revered. Practical, honest men, who enjoyed the sweets of life. He, Edward, would restore them; and doubtless they would show their gratitude in a practical, honest way.

Eventually Warwick and he were left alone. The Earl seemed fidgety, and Edward was chafing from the summer sounds outside. Nearly nine! He was determined to be astride his favourite courser within the hour.

‘So, Richard, how goes it?’

‘Well enough, your Grace,’ said Warwick.

Edward gestured impatiently. ‘God’s Blessed Lady! You know my name well enough. Use it.’

‘Ned,’ said Warwick. ‘Ned, my lord. I have serious matters for your opinion. They can delay no longer.’

‘Queen Margaret, no doubt,’ said Edward with a sigh. ‘Well, where is she today? Harlech, Scotland? Give me your scurriers’ news, and I’ll summon an array. Although, God’s Blood! my armies are marched to death. I had thought we might rest a week.’

‘Certes, rest all you wish,’ said Warwick unexpectedly. ‘My serious matters, if you consider them favourably, may give us rest for our lifetimes.’

Edward sat down in the chair of estate and contemplated his own well-turned thighs. The Earl’s next words should not have surprised him, yet they did.

‘It concerns your marriage, Ned. England needs a Queen, and you must get an heir.’

‘So,’ murmured Edward, thinking of his bastards. None could ever doubt his potency. He raised his golden brows. ‘Whom have we in mind?’

From his pouch Warwick drew sealed letters. ‘I have, your Grace, taken the liberty of securing the hand of the Princess Bona of Savoy. Isabella of Spain would also honour such an alliance, but Savoy is shaped to meet our needs in these precarious times.’

He held the letters out to Edward, who did not move or speak.

‘The Princess will come next year to be your bride.’

Suddenly stricken by implication, Edward said: ‘The Lady Bona is sister by marriage to Louis of France!’

‘Yes,’ answered Warwick swiftly. ‘And this is three parts of her value. With you wed to Louis’s kin, there can be no more assaults from the Frenchwoman. France and England can unite. Think, your Grace! Peace without blood!’ He added casually: ‘Bona, they say, is very fair.’

Wild thoughts nipped at Edward. He broke into a light sweat. Eleanor. Because of my madness with Eleanor, I can marry none. I always wondered whether Warwick, through his spies, had any knowledge of this; now it is proven that he has not. Nor shall he have. But what of this princess he offers me? Implication, realization, smote at him, making his voice hard in reply.

‘Burgundy,’ he said.

The Earl spread his hands deprecatingly, and was silent.

‘I will not side with France against Burgundy,’ said the King tightly. ‘Not even for the sake of peace’ Louis would expect, nay, demand, that his new kinsman align himself with him against the hated, coveted realm. ‘Christ!’ his voice rose. ‘I owe Burgundy my brothers’ lives. Have you forgotten how Duke Philip cherished them in exile, when the Anjou witch would have had them butchered? I can never repay Burgundy!’

Now he was sure of the truth in the rumours of Warwick’s friendship with Louis. He wondered how far it had gone. How ruthless the Earl was, and how short of memory! Coldly, Edward said:

‘My lord, I trust you continue to guard my brother Richard as faithfully as Duke Philip did.’ He changed tack, and smiled an infuriating smile. ‘I, too, have every intent of matchmaking. My sister Margaret shall marry Philip’s son: Charles of Charolais. Burgundy shall remain our ally.’ Secretly he thought too of the wool trade, the low levies and the desirability of commerce with Burgundy rather than France. Edward did not like France at all.

Warwick chose to disregard this last statement. He said coldly:‘Richard does well at Middleham. He is by far the best of my henchmen. He excels in the arts of war. He is not the weakling we all thought him.’

Tell me what I know not, Edward thought, the last vestige of his good humour gone. I know Dickon’s worth: Why else would I make him Admiral of England? He may be only twelve and his brother George topping him by inches, but had I to choose in whose hands to lay my life …

‘And he loves me well,’ said Warwick, cool and dangerous. ‘He vows I am his second father. As for George, he would ride with me to the earth’s end.’

The meaning was obvious. Remain my pupil; do my will, or I will suborn your brothers! Edward had never seen the Earl like this. It was also obvious that he had expected an immediate acceptance of the Savoy proposal. Well, this moment was as good as any. Obduracy flourished in Edward. Now pupil can bid master come and go! He rose.

‘Enough,’ he said. Outside the day glittered, and the birds were singing like mad angels.

‘What am I to tell Savoy, your Grace?’

The King stopped, near the door. Warwick’s knee was bent, his head bowed, but a flush of chagrin mounted to his hairline.

‘Tell them that I am going hunting.’ He went out, brain whirling from the impact of this new Warwick, thoughts stumbling over the impossible prospect of marriage – any marriage. Eleanor. Eleanor, why were you not wanton and easy, like Dame Lucey? Anxieties knotted within him, and were suddenly overlaid by a calm, insistent voice, culled from the crazy patter of a dream: ‘At Grafton … at Grafton …’

He sent messengers ahead to greet the Duchess of Bedford, to arrive a full day and a half ahead of his party. This would give her time to call in any cattle on Whittlebury Chase; his hounds would bring down anything, even the lion, the unicorn. He decided not to burden the Duchess with providing hospitality for all his train. These isolated manors were usually cheerless anyway. Time enough to think of where to stay when the hunt was over. He ran down the Palace stair, leaving his esquires far behind with each long stride. There, waiting for him was Lord Hastings, solid as granite; a drinker, a wencher, a true fellow about whose neck he flung an arm. And the Earl of Desmond, clad in hunters’ green; young, handsome and eager. If any asked, Edward could say with truth that Desmond was the knight he loved best. Desmond was like the spring, bright and promising. He made Edward laugh, he lifted his rare melancholies with warmth and wisdom. He was utterly trustworthy, cultured and noble. For all these reasons Edward had bestowed upon him the Deputy Lieutenancy of Ireland.

‘Tom, we’re for Northamptonshire!’ he cried. Desmond pulled a long face, grumbling that it was the devil of a way to ride merely to chase the boar, and Edward laughed. He began to sing, a coarse verderers’ song; he clutched Thomas Fitzgerald Desmond about the shoulders and they sparred together like yokels all the way to the princely stables. The esquires followed, shocked and admiring. Edward lifted his face to the sun and laughed again. He was England’s King; he could do as he pleased, and he was going hunting.

He was also disenchanted with Warwick, his one-time guide and mentor. He was ready and ripe to be undone.

She walked through the forest, holding the hands of the little boys, one on either side. The hands were cold; they were hungry and so was she. Despite the day’s heat, a chill filled their bellies. Thomas was pale, quieter, beginning at seven years to outstrip his strength by inches. Now and then she stopped to lift Richard into her arms. For all his thinness, he seemed to weigh the earth. A slight, black-robed figure, she went dwarfed by the giant trees while all around the forest sang and scampered, small birds and animals in ceaseless activity. She went slowly, unafraid, for nothing could harm her. Even the wolf and wild boar would pass her by, for her mother had laid the word upon them.

In the past two years she had grown to Jacquetta like ivy to an elm. It had been a long and painful business, with many joltings of her spirit, rebellion and tears, but now the two of them were one in desire. Therefore she walked the appointed way at the appointed time through Whittlebury, and often she smiled. Coupled with her downcast eyes, the smile was strangely sinister. Seldom did she look up; the mossy way, starred with celandine and buttercup, made itself plain and clear before her, like the words of a well-learned text.

‘She asked Raymond for as much of the land around the fountain as could be covered by a stag’s hide, and she cut the hide into ten thousand strips so that her land extended far beyond the forest. There she built Lusignan…’

A bubble of hunger rose in her throat. At Grafton the household was far too large for comfort, even in her father’s absence. He was away mostly, leading a life unknown, not fighting, for since the royal pardon he had eschewed Queen Margaret’s cause. But there were the sweet, ever-famished sisters: Catherine, Jacquetta, Anne, Mary, Margaret, Eleanor, Martha. Young Edward was at sea and Lionel in training for holy orders. But there was still Dick, cursing his lack of fine clothes, and nineteen-year-old John, who ate the heartiest of all. Anthony was married to a kinswoman of Ismania Lady Scales and Elizabeth was glad for him. He was Lord Scales in right of his wife and could be summoned to the Parliament. He visited Grafton occasionally, and the fair comeliness of his face reminded her of another, two years dead, and her own insupportable pain.

‘There she built Lusignan …’

But had Melusine loved? Had she lost a husband at the hands of Raymond’s kin? These were questions forbidden by the Duchess; locked away since that first intense conversation in Jacquetta’s private solar. Then, Elizabeth, laughing and crying, had vowed she would sooner put her head in fire than come within an armsbreadth of any Yorkist murderer. Yet she had been conquered, by one sentence, repeated like a charm.

‘Do as I say,’ Jacquetta, great eyes burning, whispered. ‘Do as I say, and you will hurt my lord of Warwick sore.’

There was the spark to the brand. Since the rape of Bradgate, Elizabeth had lain nightly conjuring tortures for the enemy, torments so real that they disturbed her sleep. Warwick’s gouged eyes, his flesh aflame with everlasting fire; Warwick hanged from Bradgate’s tower, a spike through his tongue. All these outrageous impossible lusts outmatched so simply by one calm phrase: Do as I say. And she had cried: ‘Yes, madame! With my last breath!’ And so the fantastic pattern was revealed with all its diabolical nuances. Secrets so black and bloody between herself and Jacquetta and the world, that she often trembled at their implications. Sir Richard Woodville could not know, and the sisters were kept apart. Catherine, the dearest, was hurt and troubled. More acute than the others, she pestered Elizabeth: what was that strange perfume, that ugly herb, gathered by night? and received a curt answer, or none at all.

Catherine had wept over Jocelyne de Hardwycke. Not a month after her exile from Bradgate, Elizabeth had received him; he had sought her out, his face troubled and tender. The facile love-poems were a thing of the past. He knelt, he spoke of the passion that had kept him single for years, recalling episodes: her flight from the Hall under King Henry’s displeasure (Jocelyne had wept for her); her beauty at the Christmas disguising. He was not John, but these were John’s memories too, brought like a dead bird by a hound. John’s bones fed the red earth of England, and Elizabeth, robbed of sense or will, gave Jocelyne her hand. She said: ‘I am a dead woman; to which he replied: ‘Let me bring you back to life!’

His respectful kiss brought no intoxication. She reminded him that John had not been dead six months. These words brought fresh tears from her, more kisses from him. He begged her to accept his meagre estate, for Hardwycke had suffered too, as a Lancastrian holding. His arms were comforting, and he was kind. Broken, uncaring, she agreed, and sought the Duchess to inform her. It was a moment not to be forgotten. ‘We shall not wed until next year,’ she finished. ‘I will keep John’s Month Mind properly, as his widow. Jocelyne will wait.’

The Duchess was writing at her lectern. Slowly she laid down her quill. Even with her face backed by window-light, the white fury stabbed clear, a warning. Confused, Elizabeth thought: Jocelyne should have approached my mother first. His ardour led him into forgetfulness …

‘There’s no love between us,’ she stammered. ‘But I have the little knaves to look to, and . .

The Duchess advanced across the room, a terrible look on her face. Holy Jesu! thought Elizabeth. Is Jocelyne a felon? Has he some great crime? His policies are right; he is of Lancaster … Then the Duchess struck. Her hand cracked on Elizabeth’s cheekbone, making her teeth rattle and her head sing like a hive. Reeling, she tried to speak.

‘Madame…’

‘Madame me not,’ said the Duchess. ‘What, madam, have you done this day?’

They stared at each other stonily.

‘The truth,’ whispered the Duchess. ‘Has any priest witnessed your vows?’

‘Nay,’ said Elizabeth, trembling hard. ‘It was a privy matter, decided between Jocelyne and me, on the moment.’

Uncomprehending, she heard the great hiss of expelled breath, saw the colour return to Jacquetta’s face. She knelt, and waited.

‘He must be forbidden our manor,’ said the Duchess. Lost, Elizabeth bowed her head. Presently she felt her shoulder lightly touched and looked up. The Duchess held something under her eyes. It was a wax manikin, and about its head was twined a fuzzy comb of black hair. At its waist was a tiny band of iron, meshed so tightly with the wax that the figure was almost cut in two.

‘To sap his strength,’ said the Duchess, very low. ‘My enemy and yours, child. Soon or late, he will fall. By Mithras, he will perish and die.’

That day was the first she had sworn on the ancient heathen god, in Elizabeth’s hearing. She held the figure closer to her daughter’s face.

‘My lord of Warwick!’ she said and hissed, pointing. Fear, and joy worse than any fear, filled Elizabeth.

‘Do not marry Hardwycke. Do as I say,’ said the Duchess. So the campaign began. Catherine wept; she loved Jocelyne, and thought her sister cruel.

Elizabeth walked on, bending beneath the branches hung with succulent leaf, going deeper into the forest. She felt impelled by a force beyond thought, tied by an invisible thread to her mother’s solar, and her steps were guided by that thread’s true pull and play. In the dim greenness of Whittlebury’s heart, she was conscious of the little cold hands in hers, and the silence, for the birds had stopped singing. All but one, who screamed a constant, urgent warning. There was a vast oak, big enough to house twenty men within its crusted trunk. The unseen thread had loosed its pull. She halted beneath the tree, raising her eyes at last to the trellised blue above. Tom sat down in the elbow of a cavernous root and began to whittle with his knife. Soon she heard the thick hollow moan of the hunting horn. Commanded, she raised her hands to the dusty black wimple and loosed it from her hair.

Less than half a league away the King rode through the forest like a meteor. His legs splashed, his doublet rent, he was gloriously happy. He had brought three horses to exhaustion. He had lost his velvet cap long ago and his bright hair blew tangled as he rode. Desmond galloped his mount beside the King’s. Often the two men glanced back and laughed to see the courtiers unhorsed, belabouring baulking horses or caught in thickets and cursing. The huntsman was blowing like one possessed, the sweet language of the chase; the notes long and short: Trout trout, tro ro rot! Hastings rode hard behind the King; he waved his whip and smiled. ‘There! There!’ yelled Edward, pointing at a distant backlash of green branches. Illoeques, illoeques! replied the huntsman, signalling the sighting. Twenty couples of sleek hounds poured forward, a mottled river. Edward’s spur struck blood as, with Desmond, he plunged after the pack, bending just in time to avoid an overhanging branch. He jerked his mount’s head around a bend; there, down a green avenue, bowshot-straight, the quarry, a great bronze stag, fled surgingly. The pack sang and bayed. Edward cried out, joining with the huntsman’s scream: sa, cy, cy, avaunt, sohow! He had been disappointed to find no boar, but, by the Rood! this was better. From the moment that the limer had tracked down this magnificent beast, and the blood-mad hounds had been uncoupled to run unerringly, every care had dropped from him. He had forgotten Warwick; as for the secret that sometimes plagued him like a hairshirt – it was dead and buried. He smote his horse and rode knee to knee with Desmond. As if he were racing at Smithfield Horse Fair (an unrealized dream). There was so much that kingship forbade.

The stag was cunning, like a lovesome woman. As all women should, it evaded capture until the very last, trying every manoeuvre until that inevitable moment … but this outshone the pursuit of women. Ahead of the hounds singing their lustful joy, the stag twisted and doubled, plunged through a fat thicket and reappeared further up the glade, its antlers festooned with foliage like a knight’s jousting helm. The hounds had lost a little ground. They burst from the bushes, muzzles scratched bloody and surged forward, all bravery, while the kingly beast, for which Edward now felt a passionate love, soared boundingly on. Could the pack be tiring? God’s Blessed Lady! he muttered. The stag was fleet, the distance between it and pursuit growing steadily. Edward frowned, gripping his horse between strong thighs: He had never wanted a kill so much in his life. Close behind him rode bowmen, weapons slung and jouncing. A pity to deny the dogs but that hateful gap was lengthening, the gold-bronze, sweated haunches of the quarry lunging powerfully, and the path growing more tortuous. He half-turned in the saddle to yell a command. Several goose-quill arrows thrummed past his ear, falling wide. One or two overshot the running beast; it swerved wildly before racing on.

‘Blood!’ cried Edward. ‘Give me a bow!’

He tore on the reins so that his horse reared and screamed. Behind him, the whole company clashed to a disorderly halt. One of Hastings’s henchmen soared over his mount’s head into a thornbush and Desmond laughed for joy, but the King’s mouth was grim with anguish. He seized the proffered bow, fitted a barb and, standing in his stirrups, discharged one, two, three shots, snatching arrows and loosing them with powerful fluid movements. The first shot bounded off the quarry’s antlers, the second missed completely. Then, in the third dart’s swift trajectory, he saw the stag waver and plunge. His cry of triumph mingled with arrogant music of the horn, the frenzy of the hounds.

Wounded in the shoulder, the stag still ran under the impetus of its own leaping fear. It would feel no pain yet, only the lust to flee – like a virtuous woman under the first kiss! He called to the half exhausted hounds: ‘How amy, swef, amy, sa, sa, sa!’ Time to check them a little, or they would be too run down to effect the consummation.

Churning up bog-mire, tearing through branches, the King’s hunt rode. The deep wound was taking its toll of the quarry; it slowed and stumbled now and then. The pack, renewed by joy, was gaining. The hunt thundered across a glade, struggled through a streamlet and up a steep bank. John Neville’s mount slid on to its side and brought down four other horses. Terrified birds left their perches with a roar of wings. Overall the horn cried: Trout, trout, tro, ro, rot! Covered in mud, thorns in his hair, King Edward chased the stricken animal into a grove of trees. Under his breath he called it endearments. Then the hounds had it by the heels.

It was down, antlers rearing like the mast of a broken ship in a sea of writhing, brindled life. Desmond leaped down to steady the King’s horse as, nearly falling from excitement and stiffness of limb, he dismounted. The huntsman came forward with the special weapons of chivalry, each knife honed to separate sharpness, each blade designed for the ritual kill and dismembering. Solemnly Edward took the slaying knife. When the dogs had been whipped from their prey he bent and looked into the brown, fear-glazed eyes. So like a woman’s … he saw his own face, mudstreaked and haloed by the sun, reflected there. Under his hand the great antlers heaved, almost throwing him off balance. He set the knife to the sweating, satiny throat.

Behind him came the murmurs of approval. A good, kingly kill, by a man skilled in venery with strength to sever proud muscle and sinew. A rich jet of blood soared and splashed the King’s face, to make patterns with the crusted mud. He straightened his back and sighed. ‘A noble beast.’ He handed the killing-blade back to the huntsman, feeling drained and holy. He turned to count his followers, to speak to Desmond, to drink in the surrounding greenness and worship the blue day. About a dozen strides away he saw the woman beneath the oak. So still, so small and nunly in her black gown. But the hair that cloaked her to her knees made nonsense of nunliness. Two little boys sat at her feet; he scarcely saw them. He looked at that hair, that face, lit by silver sunlight. And then he knew why he had come to Grafton.

Thomas Fitzgerald Desmond saw her too, and his lips pursed in a little soundless tune, a tribute, courtly and almost mechanical, to her beauty. She was so still; that stillness sent an unexplained shudder over his body. He felt the sweat drying cold upon his neck and face. He knew his King, however, as well as any man can know another. So at his whispered command the other courtiers pulled their horses round and drew off from Edward. They faded, converging about the huntsman and the cadaver of the stag, they became part of the backcloth of green trees. Their outlines were misty, their voices muted. With steps still unsteady from the ride Edward walked towards the great oak, from whose heart came the liquid piping of one uneasy bird. The King felt himself trembling, and deeply aroused, ridiculously ashamed of this arousal, and subsequently confused. He knew an odd desire to kneel before Elizabeth, which was madness. All these warring emotions made his voice unusually harsh.

‘I am Edward Plantagenet.’

There was no need for this; she herself already knelt, pressing the little boys down on either side of her. At this he felt an irrational regret. Looking down upon the crown of her head, which was clothed by finest shining textures impossible for anything but divinity to weave, he said more softly: ‘Rise, lady. The ground is damp under trees.’

Slowly she obeyed. She raised her eyes until they were level with his strong sunburned throat, then higher so that they encompassed his face. He was more man than any she had ever beheld. Broad and slender, but so monstrously tall – a giant. After one glance at the mud and blood-splashed face she lowered her gaze again to his neck. Thoughts ran through her like little flames. This is Edward, the Yorkist butcher! Then something stilled her inner wildness; a last pull from that invisible thread, reminding her that the struggles and the sacrifices of the past months should not go in vain. A well-shaped hand was extended for her kiss. She tasted sweat, beast’s blood, the fading hint of rosewater. She lifted her innocent, starved face and gave the King one crystal look. She ventured timidly (her mother’s first injunction – be always douce, he will wish to dominate): ‘Your Grace made a fine kill.’ And, hearing the distant crack of bones being dismembered: ‘A good store of venison. The beast was fat.’

For a moment he was silent, then he said gently: ‘Unlike yourself, Madame, if I may say it. The stag is yours. I will have my grooms deliver it to your manor.’

She bowed her head and smiled. Good. Good. Melusine had asked only for the hide! Already she owned the whole beast. She could feel the King’s gaze, hotter than the latticed sunlight.

‘Your Grace is generous,’ she said soberly, ‘and my family is always conscious of past benefits.’

The royal pardon. So it was that he knew her. It could have been none other in any case, he thought, than the daughter of the dreamlike Jacquetta, lately of Lancaster. Had his eagerness left room for sense, he might have groaned at the thought. Eleanor had been Lancastrian; these fair women always seemed to embrace foul policy. Still, all that was over; soon all the world would be for York.

Thomas, meanwhile, had been regarding the King with interest. His own head reached only to the top of Edward’s thighboot. Rudely piping, his voice floated up.

‘Sir, are you really the King?’

Edward cuffed the child’s ear gently and laughed.

‘Yes! little knave, by God’s grace.’ He looked down at the smaller, silent Richard, and back to Elizabeth.

‘Your sons?’

‘My fatherless sons.’ She raised sparkling eyes, in the face which she herself thought robbed by privation of much beauty, and which he marked as slender and winsome. A good thing of the spirit, like the Virgin, Our Lady, whom he had adored as a child and swore upon as a man. Yet in this face was something thrillingly at odds with things spiritual, that made his body molten and his face hot. He was the veteran of frightful battles and skilled in political strategy. His hand lay on England’s heart. He knew and used women. Yet his voice shook as he asked: ‘Have you ever been at court?’

‘Yes. With Marguerite …’ She bit her lips. Wrong. A mistaken reminder likely to incense him. Yet he seemed not to have noticed. He became secretly further inflamed, and not with anger. Starkly he wondered what her price was. There were gaps in his imagination that admitted only what he wished to believe.

‘You might come to court as our guest,’ he muttered. ‘There are wondrous sights, and banquets. Things are not as you would remember them.’ Henry’s piety had forbidden true revelling, and when she saw the new glory that was Edward’s, she would be his at once. That slender body could writhe in dances public and private. In his mind all was settled; so he was amazed when she answered:

‘Sire, I am widowed, and bound to stay at Grafton. In prayer, and in duty to my mother and my sons. You do me honour which I must sadly decline. Yet … may I invite you to share our humble joy at the manor?’

This was Jacquetta’s second injunction. Bring him under our roof. Let him eat our food, drink our ale and wine. Then the task will be easy. Elizabeth continued: ‘We have little to offer a prince. Yet our sun would shine, reflecting his splendour!’

Her words were spontaneous, yet they could not have been better chosen. She looked into his gratified blue eyes.

‘All that we are or ever might be is in your keeping, Sire.’

And, royal cub, may God rot Warwick’s soul for Bradgate, and for the death of my love. Come to Grafton, Edward of March! Come, and be entranced! She lifted her face again and smiled, a gentle, loving smile, facsimile of the forgiving Virgin’s look, while he began to ask her of her family. Hearing of the many unwed sisters, an understanding pout spread across his face so that he was like a boy aping a wise old man. She touched but lightly on her brothers and scarcely mentioned Anthony, whom Edward and Warwick had once cursed at Calais. Although she felt instinctively that this episode had fled the King’s mind, she must do nothing to jolt his sweet mood. Lastly she told him her name: Elizabeth, for the glad and loving Isabella was dead and buried. Immediately Edward christened her anew.

‘Bessy,’ he said slowly. ‘Light and nimble. A name like a piece of silk.’

‘Your Grace is a poet.’

‘I have inspiration.’ His eyes moved over her, lingering at her waist, her thighs. The coarse black habit could have been a sheet of glass. She stood, unworried. Yes, my lord. Look, and look again. I shall build Lusignan in that look!

A figure approached behind the King. A young, handsome knight, with a mouth that looked as if it always smiled. Like a sleepwalker, Edward turned to address him.

‘Tom,’ he said, ‘this lady is the daughter of the Duchess of Bedford. Grafton Regis …’To Elizabeth he explained:‘My lord of Desmond.’ The knight made a bow, all flourishes, stood hand poised on dagger, still smiling. ‘Greeting, Dame Woodville,’ he murmured. The error raised a stab of anger in her. ‘My name is Grey,’ she said, with a wistful smile.

‘Widow of Sir John Grey,’ said Edward briskly. ‘You remember him, Tom. He was a fine horseman who ran with the wrong pack!’

‘Certes, Grey! Like the colour!’ Desmond laughed. The laugh tingled down Elizabeth’s spine. All her unvented spleen rose to envelop Desmond, while she continued to look meekly downward, smoothing the hair and clothing of the two little boys, by now yawning and fidgeting. The King and his friend moved away a little, conferring. She listened hard; they were speaking of the King’s future plans. She heard the word ‘Fotheringhay’ and the King’s deep sigh. He turned slowly and strode back to her. He took her hands, so hard she thought the bones were crushed.

‘You offered me your hospitality,’ he said, very low. ‘But that stag is for you and yours, lady. I would not have it wasted on those who eat venison daily. He gestured towards the straggling knot of courtiers behind him, then looked down kindly at the two little boys. He notes our meagre bodies and our pallor, she told herself. She let her hands tremble in his as if they were too frail for the holding. She whispered something, soft enough for him to bend closer.

‘My lady?’ His eyes were hot again.

Leaning a little so that her shoulder brushed his upper arm, she whispered: ‘If your Grace were … to come with a smaller entourage. To my shame, Sire, you must know we are very poor at Grafton.’

He drew a quick, exultant breath. He murmured: ‘Lady, my lady. I will do better than that. I will come alone.’

Then, like a schoolboy with his first passion, he abandoned kingship. He covered both her hands with kisses. Over his bowed shoulder she saw two things: the stag, now in pieces, being loaded on to mules, and Desmond’s face, which raised in her a peculiar hatred.

She stood feeling the King’s greedy mouth upon her wrists. She was suddenly transfixed with awe and fear at how easy it had been; then the fear died under a leaping, pitiless joy.

Through that summer and autumn, during winter’s clutch and spring’s swift renewal, the King came riding. He came as alone as a king can be, with a handful of armed knights, and an esquire or two. These gentlemen respectfully withdrew to the neighbouring hamlet while their sovereign dallied at Grafton.

Elizabeth was a city under siege, her drawbridge bound up tight, enchained by the counsel of Jacquetta of Bedford. Hold back. Once you surrender, all is for naught. There were times when Elizabeth, nerves taut as hemp, would gladly have disobeyed her mother, and been rid of the desirous hands, the hot mouth. The voice which began the day softly, grew impatient, and rose to quarrelling petulance. Often he left her in a foul humour, rode through the gates and returned minutes later to beg her pardon. Each time he vowed his love; he would never desert her as he had other lemen (yes, he admitted past treachery), and once there were tears in his eyes. He knew naught of the flood she herself loosed as soon as he was safely from the manor. Painful tears, legacy of the exhausting battle against his demands. She asked herself: would it be so harmful to yield just once? And the Duchess, knowing her mind, would encompass her with passionate warning.

In September he brought her a device for her throat; diamonds and pale flaming rubies. He sat beside her in the solar and fumbled to place his gift about her flesh. Jacquetta knocked, entered, knelt. Her lustrous eyes, the pupils blackly dilated, signalled to Elizabeth the required response. Obediently there came the downward look, the regretful smile. ‘Nay, my liege, I am unworthy!’ Edward’s barely controlled temper was audible, little gusty breaths. At Christmas came two harriers, lean joyful young dogs, which she returned with the courier who delivered them. The following week she received an angry note, signed only: ‘Ned’. He favoured anonymity, yet the sisters, maddened and curious, whispered their own assumptions in private, for there was none like him in the whole of England.

By April, her strength had diminished. Drained by endless assault, there were times when she saw the true end of the campaign as something misty and forgotten. Its purpose was veiled by the constancy of Edward’s bruising hands, his pleading, his temper. Although she was but six years older than he, the six seemed sixty. His voice echoed in her dreams. ‘Yield, Bessy! Bessy, my heart’s lust!’ And his near-blasphemies, which should have offended her and strangely did not: ‘Forget the priests! True love is past all priestly knowing!’Truly he was a boy, a child, uninitiated, unaware that there were others than God …

But one such dream made her cry out, mid-April. Faithful Renée ran to her mistress’s bedside, while Elizabeth writhed, remembering. She had been riding to Bradgate, John beside her, singing. She turned to kiss him and was engulfed by the King’s mouth, that bruised her lips and breast. Desire leaped within her shamefully, while Bradgate’s tower soared straight and strong before her eyes. There were the jewels, falling like a rainbow; jewels everywhere, the device she had returned and countless more, pearls for her ears, a girdle studded with sapphire and gold, silver chalices flowing with rich wine, a unicorn’s horn filled with emeralds. Then came her mother’s voice, that dried the King’s kisses and pinned a scowl upon his face. She heard herself crying.

‘Get up, daughter.’ The feel of her mother’s arms, awesomely tender, shocked her awake. ‘Be comforted.’

‘I thought I was at Bradgate!’

‘You shall have Bradgate. You shall have manors by the hundred.’

She said: ‘For Jesu’s love, madam, how much longer?’

‘Not long,’ said the Duchess.

I lusted for that necklace,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I long for Bradgate.’

‘All,’ replied Jacquetta. ‘All shall be yours, and more. He comes today. Prepare for storms, for Mars is in the ascendant! But Venus waits, and Jupiter …’

She sent Renée away. ‘I will attend my lady.’ Whispering up and down, like a guttering candle, she ministered to Elizabeth. That face must know no blemish. She took two small vials, the contents of which she applied to her daughter’s skin.

‘Lac Virginis.’ It was an incantation. ‘Since time unremembered it has been used.’ The potion tightened on Elizabeth’s face. Litharge of lead, ground on marble into white vinegar with sandiver and settled for a day and a night, filtered into two waters for the application. ‘To make ladies beautiful,’ said the Duchess with a devilish laugh. ‘And used by Queens.’ The strong hands massaged, hurting cheekbones too near the skin.

He came at noon, full of golden humour. Among the sweet airs of spring they walked, in Grafton’s little pleasaunce. They came to an arbour hung with the green promise of summer. There, he loosened her wimple; he was clumsy as a colt. The silver-gilt hair fell over his hands like a wild river. He began to caress her, his fingers straying to the bounds of propriety. He was so young and clean; she could imagine how others had succumbed. She stared him out with her look of lucent virtue; she rose to pluck a flower. She laughed gently, sighed and withdrew, melted the next moment, only a second later to become adamantine. All afternoon she played a dangerous game, watching his face pale and the muscles of his arms and thighs quiver like those of a man with palsy. This great, royal fish! She played him on her line. Yet he was stronger this day, more stubborn. It had been folly to bring him to the arbour. Away from the house, his fire kindled and blazed. Each long embrace grew more uncontrollable. Her diversions failed; he would not let her rise. His eyes, seen closely, were like an animal’s, sick and pleading.

‘Bessy, why do you torment me?’ he gasped. ‘God’s Blood, that I should be in this fire. Do you not know-’ he shook her fiercely – ‘that I am the King of England!’

‘And I your loyal subject, Sire.’

He choked on wrath. ‘Plague on your loyalty! I would have your love.’

Pinioned, she answered: ‘I love you as my King,’ the words cut off by a savage kiss that brought blood into her mouth. To quench the pain, she imagined it to be Warwick’s blood. Edward’s face was against her hair. ‘Love me as a man, not a King … eight months!’ He gave a crazed laugh. ‘Eight months, in which I have had time to fight against your erstwhile mistress, la maudite Margaret – all the while thinking, dreaming of you. Bessy, I would never desert you. You would be cherished unto death. Only give me your body and your heart!’

She heard her gown tear. He would ravish her now, and all lost. She raised one desperate hand and struck him in the face. The next instant he had drawn his knife. Its jewelled hilt flirted with the sun, prisms of blue and gold and green. He set the blade against her throat.

‘Yield to me,’ he said softly.

A witless laugh trembled within her. She looked into his eyes, riding out their blue storm. The Yorkists killed John – now a Yorkist king kills me. The blade’s edge was beginning to burn. She was unready for death; there was so much to gain, Bradgate, jewels, vengeance. And yet she found herself smiling, as if the smile had been painted on by an imp.

He flung down the knife and sprang up. His towering shadow blotted the sun. He cursed her, calling her wanton, bloodless, jade, a whore that should be a nun, though there was no cloister devious enough to hold her. A cheating favour-seller, master and mistress of cruelty and child of Hell. So he railed, while Mars romped in the ascendant. He turned to leave, looking back once, turkey-red, his eyes bloodshot, saying:

‘Keep your cursed chastity, Madame. You will not see Edward Plantagenet again.’

She watched him go, riding with savage spurs and oaths for his escort. A qualm of fright gripped her. She stood for a little while, chewing her bruised lips, then walked slowly towards the manor. The Duchess was at her window, watching with a little smile the fading smudge of dust on the horizon.

‘The King has left his cloak,’ she said. She moved back into the dimness of the solar, and lifted the heavy rich velvet into her arms. All round the collar hairs clung, gleaming like gold-dust. With infinite care Jacquetta plucked them until she had a fistful of shining booty. Over a little flame, a dish of tallow heaved. She watched it and her smile stretched into a snarl. Plenty there, to shape into a gold-headed King.

And she was a craftswoman, she would make this time a better image than the crude Warwick, who lay in his secret coffer, the iron band eating at his vitals. She stole a swift glance at the Earl’s spellcast image, before bending to her more special work.

Within five days, the King returned to Grafton.

From the kitchen where lately there had been shouts and snatches of song, came only silence. A cask of spiced mead had been broached for the royal escort, the anonymous men employed for the King’s secret forays to Grafton. They had drunk and now lay, oblivious, while their sovereign, supine upon Elizabeth’s bed, covered his eyes and groaned softly.

He had touched no wine, but his brain was on fire. He could see the flames; they lapped the pillows, and his upthrown hands had gloves of fire. Desire was stilled for a space, burned by these phantom flames. Faces flowered about him, lambent and terrifying: Warwick, arrogantly ordering his marriage with the Savoy princess; his own mother, the Rose of Raby, beautiful, widowed, spiritual, shaking her head sadly through a mist of fire. Another face, saintly, defiled. A tearstreaked, forgiving face. Eleanor, my love. He tried to say it; flames licked his tongue, and the name emerged bewitched.

‘Elizabeth!’

‘I am here, sweet lord.’

She knelt by the bed, crushing down terror at the sight of his dementia. An hour earlier she had found courage enough to rail at her mother, saying that they would all be hanged in chains. For the King was ill after the strange meal Jacquetta had prepared, the herbal drink stirred in a special way.

‘Christ’s Blood, madam, he is dying!’

The Duchess took up the bowl that had contained the amanita muscaria, its dark fungoid taste masked by basil and cinnamon. ‘Go up,’ she said calmly. ‘Ask him what you would. He will gainsay you nothing.’

So Elizabeth knelt, and took his hand. Down the whole of his body desire rekindled unbearably at her touch. Eleanor faded, his mother faded, and Warwick turned inside out with a sharp ‘phut!’ vanishing into blackness like a spent firecracker. He had enjoyed the mushroom. An Eastern speciality, she had called it, that old woman of his dream.

She had ministered tenderly to him, topping his hanap with a thick liquid. ‘Jupiter’s brew,’ she said. It was so sweet that he, used to the indulgence of all sweetness, had found it irresistible. It was mixed with the scents of Elizabeth’s body, that aroma …

‘Vervain, my lord.’ Her voice washed around him, each word a cascade of glittering flame. ‘To strengthen the intellect and nervous humours.’ (And to restore lust, even in the grave.) ‘Ruled by Venus, for merrymaking.’

He tried to laugh. ‘I’m far from merry today. So weary …’

‘You are Edward,’ she said gently. ‘Edward Plantagenet.’ Of the third son of the third Edward, and destined to be mine. She watched his speedwell eyes, tiny and defenceless as a sparrow’s. She suffered his limp hand upon her breast. ‘I would have your love,’ he said, like a child about to cry. He moved weakly so that there was room beside him on the bed. ‘If this is sin, I’ll take and eat the sin for your soul’s good. There! I offer you not only my love, but absolution. Lie with me.’ She drew back only a little, keeping her hand in his. The next words were Jacquetta’s, learned by rote.

‘My lord,’ she said steadily, ‘if I am not good enough to be your Queen, I am too good to be your leman. The choice is yours.’ She bowed her head.

‘So,’ he said after a moment. ‘You would wed me, Bessy, and be Queen of England.’

She could tell nothing from his faint voice, whether he were angry, amused, or incredulous. She stole a look; his eyes were half closed so that a thread of white showed under the lids. Suddenly ice-cold and commanding, she answered:

‘My lord, I am not worthy to be your Queen, but my body is pure. I will be no man’s harlot. But to be your loving wife is a dream I have cherished, a dream far beyond me, your Grace. Sweet Ned!’

Out of nowhere came John’s face, tenderly, wearily smiling. O Jesu! Let me hurt my lord of Warwick sore! She swallowed real tears and continued, dicing on each word.

‘Everywhere your Grace goes, my spirit follows. I think of the sweets of love, with the Rose of Rouen …’

‘You think of them!’ he said drunkenly. ‘Oh God! that you could only be my Queen!’

Very timidly she said, watching the young reed bend: ‘I know, your Grace. There are nobles who would cry shame at our union, being as I am so low.’ She leaned closer so that the vervain at her breast and armpits drifted to his nostrils. ‘I am not ignorant. Your Grace needs the royal blood of Europe to preserve his ancient line, and …’

‘Christ!’ he said despairingly. ‘Would that it were as simple! I would say hang my nobles and advisers! Bessy, I would wed you tomorrow, save that …’

In the breath-holding silence, she stroked his hand. ‘Save that I am married already,’ he said dully.

Time ceased, gathered its wits, and moved on. Her first thought was: so all is lost. Even my mother could not foresee this blight upon our aim. All the months’ gruesome wrestling, the outrageous play for naught; the banishment of Jocelyne, to whom I could have grown close; the nightmares and tears … She looked upon the King who lay now as if in sleep, and her dismay yielded to rage. Willingly she could have killed him. A heavy pillow over the stupefied face … they would say that he had suffered a seizure and rolled among the bedcovers. Her fingers stole out and wound themselves in a bolster’s lace edge, gripping it until the blood thrust from beneath her nails. All for nothing!

He said, with closed eyes. ‘I was crazy to marry her. She was chaste, like you, Bessy, and would have me no other way. It has been a secret for three years. She has no royal blood, but – her name is Eleanor Butler, daughter of Talbot …’

‘I knew Lord Talbot,’ she said with difficulty … ‘He was killed at Guienne. One of Marguerite’s chief officers.’

He smiled. ‘Yes! Lancastrian, the whole family. Nell was so saintly, so good. Sudely, curse him, was trying to cheat her of her estates. She was widowed, she came suing to me for restoration. And we were wed.’

‘You say it’s secret?’

‘Only my lady mother knows. Well – she and a very few more. Bishop Stillington, he bound us together. And the nuns of Norwich. Eleanor is in a convent there. It was better so.’

Yes, when you wearied of her, she thought bitterly. And this knowledge challenged her to wish the campaign begun anew. He would not tire of me! Did Raymond weary of Melusine? She took Edward’s hand and kissed it.

‘I shall guard your Grace’s confidence with my blood, and pray for you daily. Even though we never meet again.’

She saw then that he wept, one tear trickling from each closed eye, balm to her savage sense of loss and failure. There was a rap on the door; Jacquetta entered, borne on a strong breeze of power, gliding over the polished boards as if on air, smiling, smiling.

‘Is my lord refreshed?’ With difficulty Edward sat up. ‘Your henchmen are without.’ She gestured to the door beyond which the escort, sick with mead, straightened their clothing. She continued: ‘Will your Grace ride now, while it is light?’

The King wiped tears and sweat from his face and rose from the bed. He did not answer.

‘Will your Grace bathe, then? It’s warm for April. I have prepared a chamber. And then, supper and entertainment? Dame Grey has a new song for your delight. Whatever you desire.’

‘I thank you,’ said Edward, ashy pale. ‘I will rest here the night, lady.’

He went out, walking like an old man, to the waiting henchmen. The. Duchess watched him dispassionately.

‘In a short while he will be renewed. The mushroom sent him visions – horrors mayhap. It sometimes does. It has weakened him like a barbed deer.’

She turned to her daughter. ‘Well?’

‘The King is married,’ said Elizabeth.

The Duchess gave a rasping laugh, and set her arm about Elizabeth’s neck.

‘You have no faith,’ she said. ‘Let him lie under our roof this night. Do you think that any earthly bond could hold him from you? Or you from destiny?’

A white moon stood tall in the sky to overlook the Duchess’s work. She moved about the sleeping manor and its grounds, followed mutely by Elizabeth. A man came to join them briefly; a pale clerk named Thomas Daunger. Learned in orders holy and unholy, he whispered incantations as he went, for his knowledge began where Jacquetta’s skill left off.

There was blood. Before retiring Edward had suffered a nosebleed; he had jested about it, saying that the Duchess’s strong wines caused his veins to rejoice and burst their banks. Elizabeth begged pardon for the liquor’s treason.

‘Give me your kerchief, lord. I will trust it to no wimplewasher.; I’ll launder it myself!’

So now the tiny gold-haired image was rosy, the tallow steaked with red like some rare precious stone. Edward Plantagenet lay still within Jacquetta’s hands, under the moon’s white eye. There was a black candle burning briefly, and more blood, fresh blood, caught before the scream of its small host had died away.

This was the consummation. A night remembered by Elizabeth only in dreams or delirium. A night where fact and fancy were so closely meshed as to be indistinguishable.

When she weakened and trembled, the Duchess fed her drops from a small blue vial, making her sight clearer and yet more treacherous. The hot white night dragged, dry as sand, an eternity of labour and strange sounds, diffused images, voices tirelessly intoning. Towards dawn, when it seemed that a thousand years were running out, the mother and daughter stood, beside Grafton’s little lake; Thomas Daunger had departed as silently as he had come. Now there were two moons, one hard and bright and sinking slowly, the other like a soul palely lost beneath the water. Between these two dead fires a light moving mist shimmered, as if the water were boiling, and with it came sights of beauty and terror: a maelstrom of fighting men, forms that sank to dissolution at the touch of Elizabeth’s eyes and renewed themselves, changed; ten thousand knights, their screaming mouths silent holes in the mist, and the cruel sting of defeat on their faces. Images that whirled and writhed; the ghostly moon wavered as if it strove to burst the water’s skin. In the trees an owl cried, the shriek of a murdered child.

She was afraid. The Duchess stood, her ankles lapped by water and reeds. The small figure of destiny lay between her hands.

‘Pray to her, daughter!’

Melusine was with them, strong, her unseen fingers tossing the mist, agitating the water. Within herself Elizabeth felt the change begin, a hardening of thought and will and dispositions, manifesting itself in a marble chill through every vein. She was afraid, and clung to fear as something natural and stable; she tried to call upon the Holy Name. She was dumb and powerless, swept by a change as irrevocable as a tidal bore.

‘See!’ said the Duchess. ‘She’ll not fail us!’

Elizabeth lifted her heavy eyes. From the lake a column of mist was rising. It formed a shape she dared not look upon.

All over England they were raising the Maypole. Long before the seashell dawn had cast up the day, there was movement on the roads. Between hawthorn hedges came pedlars, jugglers, minstrels and dancers, bound for the nearest green, the nucleus of gaiety. The cares of winter fell behind. Eagerly the people looked forward to the virile festival, the seal of spring. In every tree small birds sang of maying, and the travellers caught the tune, broke into gruff or warbling song, thinking of the ale, the sports of war or the flesh, the gossip. They wore frail garlands of flowers.

Elizabeth donned her bridal gown. She had fashioned it herself, and nights of lost sleep winked from its lucent damask, the bosom low and fringed with silver thread. Like the day itself, it was a thing of impossible splendour. She treated it cautiously.

She had no doubt that he would come. Carefully, as if each thought were a bubble, she let her mind stray to their last conversation. She had watched disbelievingly while he knelt at her feet and said the words to make her Queen of England. She had thought: he knows not what he says. To be sure, I must remind him…

‘The Lady Eleanor Butler.’

His eyes, raised to hers, were glazed, enthralled. In his mind, her words were merely some echo of a life lived long ago. He did not answer. She said then, diffidently:

‘My lord … Earl Warwick – he mislikes my family.’

The eyes cleared, became ruthless, angry.

‘Earl Warwick is not my keeper.’

Joy sprang at this; but she was still doubtfilled; for Eleanor was a living, breathing creature, wife to this besotted man. So she spoke her name again, gently. He rose and took her hands. Reverent, lust fled for the moment, he was like a shadow of the hot-breathing Edward.

‘Eleanor is with the nuns,’ he said. ‘And she is sickly, like to die… She will never leave the House of Carmelites. She is dead to me already. Bessy, don’t you know you are my fate?’

Incredulous joy gave her a smile like a jewel.

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I am, in truth, your fate!’

Therefore he would come. Even now he was riding, hard and desirous, having left his followers at Stony Stratford. He would tell them he was going hunting, even though they were in the midst of an array. A bubbling laugh escaped her, and was answered by a little sigh from Catherine, who knelt to straighten her sister’s gown.

‘You are so fair,’ she said wistfully. She held the mirror up. Elizabeth’s face had a delicate flush, the small red lips were full and pouting. Her eyebrows had been fashionably plucked almost to invisibility; did this account for the change she saw in the eyes? There was something there previously lacking. An echo of mist and water, a fluid, sensuous brilliance that lacked all compassion. A pitiless essence seen in the eyes of an old soul.

She called the other sisters and opened a walnut box. Presents. Gifts, from ‘Lord Ned’.

‘Ah, Jesu! Will you look!’ Like small wild animals they fell upon the coffer. There was a package addressed to each sister. Margaret had a ruby bracelet, Anne a gold muskball; Martha and Eleanor received pearl ear-rings, Jacquetta a jewelled missal, Catherine an emerald necklace, and Mary a sapphire ring. There was a small token packet for Elizabeth too, a harbinger of greater gifts. She unwrapped it. A message in his own hand lay within.

For Dame Elizabeth Grey,

Who grows more like Our Lady every day.

It was a pearl-and-enamel rosary, each pearl as large as her little finger-nail, the crucified Christ worked in red gold, the Five Wounds small rubies. She stared at it; suddenly its beauty repelled her, and she laid it aside. The sisters gloated, pouring their gems from hand to hand, adorning throat and fingers and ears with handfuls of light She watched them, and thought: these are the jewels of my dream, the old dream in John’s arms. She thought on him briefly and felt little emotion. Her mind touched on Warwick; the old rage was there, a comforting, everlasting fire. So love had gone, and hatred remained.

The sisters knew nothing of the day’s plan. Soon they would be sent, joyous and bemused, out into the May morning to make merry at the fair. They would not return until tomorrow. Ned had insisted on it. None must know; only the Duchess and whatever clergy she might bring in to perform the ceremony. It must be a privy matter for weeks. Until he found the words to inform his Parliament.

‘Must we stay from home overnight?’ Anne moved to her sister’s side, breathing the scent of her new muskball. ‘Must we sleep at the nunnery? I never have a full night’s rest, thanks to their bell and prayers. And they are always fasting.’ She rubbed her small belly comically.

‘Mother of God!’ cried Margaret; twirling her bracelet. ‘Fasting is naught fresh to us, Anne! And to no holy purpose, either!’

Elizabeth longed to say, proudly: Soon, hunger will be a stranger to you all. She chivvied them from the room, just as the sound of horsemen arriving drained the blood from her face and sent her into a flurry of last-minute preparation. There was a step on the stairs, hasty, too light for the King. Neither would the King burst into her bower so, although this one was tall and fair-haired, and swept her up into his arms, as the King might.

‘Sweet sister!’

‘Anthony!’ She kissed him, weeping, for his coming set the seal upon the day. He twirled her about, whistled at her finery like a knavish groom, went on his knee, sprang up and kissed her again.

‘What widow’s garb is this, my sweet? A wanton widow, by my faith, all Damascus cloth and shining like the sun. What mischief’s this? Whatever it is, may it prosper!’

So kind and charming was he that she broke her pledge, and told him. His eyes grew large in disbelief, then jubilation. There was even a kind of envy too.

‘By God!’ he said, very low. And little more; for the first time ever she saw him speechless.

‘Tell none,’ she begged.

‘Nay, nay,’ he said slowly. ‘I’d meant to tarry a few days, but I’ll go at once, before the bridegroom … Jesu! my mind rocks! … before the royal bridegroom comes.’

All gaiety gone, he knelt to her in earnest, pressing his face against the silver hem of her robe.

‘I do you homage, Madame,’ he said. ‘I salute you as Queen of England.’

‘Christ’s Blood!’ she cried. ‘Get up, fool! Would you tempt destiny?’

He rose hastily, solemn-faced. ‘Bess,’ he said tentatively, ‘have I always been a good brother to you?’

‘Always, dear lord.’

‘Then–’ sheepishly – ‘I pray you, remember me when you come into your glory. Despite my wife’s lineage, I have many enemies at court … a word from the Queen would ransom me from spite and hardship …’

Again she flinched from the word ‘Queen’. Anything could happen, even to the King being killed en route to Grafton by a fall from his horse. Yet the Duchess had bidden her be merry and confident. She took her brother’s hand.

‘I promise,’ she said. ‘Now, go at once.’ We’ll meet again.’

‘In splendour!’ His face was sharply alight. Suddenly she was infected by his ecstasy.

‘Anthony, Anthony!’ she cried. ‘You shall be with me! We will be supreme! More powerful … than the King himself!’

Young and mocking and handsome, he saluted her, slung his cloak about him and quit the room. Very soon, straining her eyes through the window she saw the little blossomy cloud of dust that heralded the King.

He came into the chapel quite alone. In the gloom his golden head was luminous as the aureole around a painted saint. He was plainly dressed in brown velvet. With the Duchess, Elizabeth stood to welcome him among banked flowers and candles. The smell of the tallow and the spring blooms rose thickly intoxicating and mingled with the cloying incense. Above all was the scent of the peerless vervain with which she had anointed her body, drifting through the chapel like a breath of mysterious song. He saw her and grew pale with longing. More unaccountably, the face of the parish priest waiting at the altar whitened also; he shot one uneasy sideways glance at her and clutched at his breviary. Beside him a boy acolyte stood motionless.

‘My love. My fate.’ The King’s lips were cold upon her hand.

‘Edward, our day is come,’ she whispered.

‘Swear me one thing.’

She nodded, expecting to be asked for assurance of love. The words were ready on her tongue.

‘Swear that you, as my Queen, take upon you eternal fealty to the House of York.’

For an instant her mind cried out in rejection. She lowered her eyes. But John was dead, love was dead. And during the past months, perjury had become her bedfellow, and her tongue the tool of blackness.

‘I swear. May God preserve York for ever and ever. Amen.’

He gave a little satisfied nod, and from his golden height looked down at her adoringly. She laid her hand on his for their binding.

The boy acolyte began to sing, a high pure cadence of almost pagan sound, like the calling birds outside the high arched window. The music pleasured her; she glanced to thank him with a look, and saw no answering flicker in the sightless eyes. Edward’s cold and sweating fingers fumbled with the marriage ring. The Eucharist was raised to heaven; the Blood of Christ burned her mouth. Like a tortured lark, the blind boy sang.

There was darkness as there might be after the end of the world. Darkness and silence. In the hour between dog and wolf, she lay plunged fathoms deep, oblivious of the bed, the world, the great naked body now quiescent beside her. And she dreamed that she was dead, lapped in blissful blackness, all struggles ended.

His voice and hands roused her yet again. The velvet darkness clung as unwillingly she rose from it, her limbs slack with fatigue, like an old woman’s. Never had she been so weary, not even after the long travail of bearing the two little boys. Resentment at Edward’s vigour trembled on the lip of her mind. But she stretched her leaden arms to him, yielded her body, brittle as an autumn leaf, while somewhere far beyond her consciousness he kissed, and groaned, and possessed. His flesh damp and burning like a marsh-fire, he muttered endearments, striving as though his one desire was to be irretrievably lost within her. The last of the comforting darkness ebbed and she was wide awake to hear him say:

‘God, God! I have been in a dream these past weeks, and now the dream is mine.’

She thought irrelevantly of her sisters. Poor Anne, grumbling at the convent bells. The girls would doubtless also be awake at this hour, summoned down draughty cloisters to mouth their sleep-sick prayers and conscious of their yawning bellies …

‘Bessy, Bessy! My lady, my heart!’ said the King. ‘My poor sisters …’ she murmured.

‘Yea! Lovely, lovesome wenches. A nosegay of flowers, and my Bessy the fairest flower of all.’

‘I wish they could have shared our wedding feast.’

The supper, prepared by Jacquetta’s own hand, had been sumptuous for Grafton. Roast sturgeon, a salmon morteux rich with cream. A syllabub with candied violets.

‘Yes, the little doves,’ he said foolishly. ‘So they should have done.’

She smiled in the blackness. ‘My lord, you yourself said …

‘Yes, yes, all must be secret,’ he replied hastily. ‘It was fitting they should lie from home this night.’

He hugged her closer, stifling her breath.

‘Yet even a king can change his whim,’ he said.

She laid her lips against his neck.

‘Anthony came today,’ she said softly.

‘Ah, Lord Scales!’ he answered after a moment. ‘A worthy knight.’

Yes, he had truly forgotten Calais, when he and Warwick called Anthony a knave’s son. She went on, softly stroking the muscular plateau of his chest:

‘He longs for favour. Would that you knew him better! He is so learned, daring in the joust. He can create a song out of air, and weapons from wit.’

‘He shall have my favour,’ said Edward.

‘And Lionel! He is the most devout in Christendom. For years he has studied the priesthood. And my young brother John! There, sweet lord, you’d find no more worthy courtier. Gracious, cultured. Dick, too …’

‘Lionel, Dick, John,’ said Edward. ‘Anthony; is there more? You have forgotten Edward, my namesake! God’s lady, Bessy! You’ll have me jealous of these poxy brothers!’

Although he was jesting, she thought it pertinent to kiss him again, which she did, deeply. It was his turn to smile, unseen. This wife of his was a strategist, and it pleased him. The large and ambitious family of Woodville pleased him too. They were a potential buckler against the power of Warwick. Now the clever Nevilles should dance to the King’s air. With this new phalanx of beholden kinfolk about him, he would have his renaissance. Not only at court, but throughout England. Sweep the board clear for a fresh set of chessmen, schooled to his every whim by gratitude. His arms tightened about Elizabeth’s frail nudity.

‘Which is your favourite sister, honey sweet?’

‘Why, Catherine, though Margaret is nearest to me by birth.’

‘Have I seen Catherine?’ He mused awhile amid the girlish bodies, the shy, perplexed smiles.

‘The little, round one.’

‘Ah yes. Well, Kate shall have for husband young Harry Buckingham. A Plantagenet of ancient line. Clever. Handsome, too. And Margaret … she could do worse than Maltravers, Arundel’s heir. The others betrothed as I see fit.’

‘And my brothers?’

He only kissed her, laughing tormentingly, his dawning beard rasping her throat. His mind went its separate way, gauging the worth of Anthony, Lionel, Richard, Edward, John. Lionel he had heard of already; cunning and glib of tongue. There might soon be a vacancy in the See of Salisbury for such a smart prelate. Edward was a seaman, always useful. Richard? A secretary perhaps. John, nineteen? He almost laughed aloud. Warwick’s own aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk, was lately widowed and very rich. She was eighty if a day; they would call it a marriage made in Hell. But it would benefit Bessy and her family, and it would make Warwick writhe. Was it too cruel? He would see. At the moment he felt too utterly content. Virtue rose and fermented in him. He could even push to the back of his mind his mother’s last letter.

‘My son, for all we hold most dear, put not your soul in jeopardy for one woman. I beg you to think anew. For bigamy is an odious state and mortal sin, and shall bring ruin and sorrow to our House …’

Those words, swiftly torn across with the parchment that bore them, had been like a fierce jet of flame. She was so pure, so utterly faithful to York and its old scions. She could not understand his longings that made nonsense of past loyalty. She did not know the wellspring of his dream: the enigma of Jacquetta’s eyes; the silver body of Elizabeth. He could not write in reply saying: Mother, I know not why, but I am bound to her. From that sacred moment in the forest, all my life’s map lay spread before me, and every path, Elizabeth.

‘I was right!’ he said out loud.

He crushed her to him, heedless of the thousand love-inflicted bruises. He said thickly: ‘And you? What do you desire, my jewel?’

‘Bradgate,’ she answered mechanically.

He burst out laughing. ‘Bradgate! That little cot! Yes, it’s yours, sweeting. But there’s a house in London for you called Ormond’s Inn; its hangings are all gold and gems, it’s one of the tallest buildings in town. And there’s Sheen for you, and Greenwich, where cursed Margaret once played her wargames; yours, my honey, all yours.’

‘Do not forget my mother,’ she said, under his mouth.

‘Blessed be she who bore you. The world’s not wide enough for her deserts.’

Lassitude came on him and he slept. Elizabeth moved cautiously from the slackened circle of his arm. She lay wakeful until dawn delved beneath the threadbare curtains. Tireless now, her mind weaved the trappings for her own coronation; the pitiless change in her achieved completion, making her bright and invincible as the diamonds she planned to wear.

It was as if the years shimmered and slid together, time itself galloping; as if no sooner had she painted all that rich early splendour, out of thought than it was upon her, past and gone. To be relived, two years later, with the same gusto as she had imagined it. Save that it had been far more glorious.

It was February, 1466. Enthroned upon a golden chair in the palace of Westminster, she watched the women dancing. Hawklike, her eyes noted every detail of their apparel (none dared outshine her), and their abject subservience. Their awed faces emphasized her queenliness; every courtly posture before the dais spoke it aloud. They had not forgotten her coronation, and today’s ceremony echoed that past glory a thousand-fold. She sat stiffly on the gleaming chair, her hands too weighted with rings to lift easily. She saw all the old nobility dancing to her tune. They were celebrating her deliverance from childbirth. That stiff sharp labour was over and already in the space of days she felt renewed. The accouchement had been vastly different from her struggles to birth Thomas and Dick. This time she had had the most skilled midwifery in the realm; Mother Cobbe. When the old woman’s veined hands had drawn a red bawling creature from the Queen, there was a united gasp of disappointment.

‘A wench,’ said the crone.

Elizabeth only smiled. Outside the door sat Master Dominic Serigo, physician and astrologer, who had so firmly prophesied a male child. While they lifted her on to the sweet new damask and sponged her with fragrances, she heard scratching on the door. A voice inquired: ‘Is it over?’

One of the women opened the door a crack. Master Dominic was maundering: ‘What has the Queen’s Grace, if you please?’ and received the tart reply: ‘Whatever ’tis the Queen has in here, sure it is a fool stands without!’ Poor Master Dominic! He was full of fear that Elizabeth could not share. For whatever she gave the King seemed to please him mightily. When he came to her bed, his face was full of mooncalf love. He kissed the red roaring babe tenderly.

‘My little maid! We will call you Elizabeth! Though you can never match my own, my peerless Elizabeth!’

The babe thrived, seemed strong. This day the Queen had been churched in Westminster and now the court came to thank the Giver of all good gifts for the sovereign’s health. Close to the dais knelt Jacquetta of Bedford, the light from a thousand costly candles turning her gem-spiked headdress to a pinnacle of ice. Her straight back quivered a little with fatigue. Elizabeth did not address her during the ceremonial, any more than she acknowledged the rest of the company, and protocol forbade Jacquetta to speak. In this, the Queen found more than a little malicious pleasure and marvelled at herself. No one is greater than the Queen! Yet Jacquetta was cherished and rewarded, rightly so; but by a Queen, and not an obedient daughter. Elizabeth turned her head and nodded to her mother, and the Duchess rose awkwardly, grimacing as the blood returned to her legs. She fixed eyes full of furious pride upon the Queen. Elizabeth spoke at last.

‘Madame, what do you desire?’

‘To be seated, your Grace.’ She smiled grimly through her discomfort. All about them dancers swirled. The court ladies tripped and swooned to the sweet frenzy of viol and rebec and cromorne. There were no knights present; as befitting the honour of childbirth, only women revered the Queen with every tortuous dance-step, each humble gesture. Elizabeth nodded again, and Jacquetta sank once more to her knees. Like a gay bird, bright hair streaming, Margaret Plantagenet, the King’s young sister, danced before the Queen, and sank in a perfect curtsey before gliding on. Too beautiful, thought Elizabeth. It was well that she would soon be gone to Burgundy, bride for the young Charles of Charolais. Warwick had been sent to negotiate the match. At the thought of Warwick, powerless and sick with rage since that summer day two years earlier, Elizabeth smiled. The company saw that smile, that lit her like a torch; a ripple of tension passed over the dancers. They leaped and spun faster to the strains of the sweating minstrels. When the Queen wore that smile, it was politic to perform one’s duty to the letter.

‘Speak,’ said Elizabeth to the Duchess. ‘Tell me what you most desire, this moment.’

‘There is an arras,’ said Jacquetta. ‘In the house of Sir Thomas Cooke, late Mayor of London. Have you seen it?’

The tapestry beggared the glory of Goliath and David at Bradgate. It portrayed the Siege of Jerusalem. Ruby blood spouted from the wounds of golden knights; silver roses climbed each border. Fifty men were needed to lift it. The Duchess said:

‘Men say that Cooke has Lancastrian sympathies.’ She raised one plucked brow gently. ‘Traitors should not own such beauty.’ The irony of this made her smile.

The Queen looked away, saying softly: ‘The King loved Cooke well, once. There are many whom once he loved.’ To herself she added: And I have changed all that!

She decided that her mother should have the arras, as speedily as Cooke should be summarily tried and gaoled. By now she knew whom she could trust to work her will. Upon her advent at court they had gravitated to her like wasps to a comfit-dish; some subtly, some openly, all useful. There was Sir John Fogge, Lancastrian through and through, though none would have guessed it. Lord Stanley and his brother Sir William; they had already shown great eagerness to wield her weapons. And John Morton, a prelate of Marguerite’s time. He came and went within the court, and never a word out of place, a dissembler too slippery ever to be marked down. Morton was sometimes here, there, in France, in Scotland, or bowing the knee to Plantagenet and York, and always cloaked by holiness.

And there was Tiptoft, John. They called him the Butcher of Worcester, and his face was enough to frighten the stars from the sky. Eyes that bulged as if a fist thrust at them from behind, a full wet mouth, and hands cold as a winter death. He was Constable of England, and the Queen’s loyal servant. His conversation was somewhat uncomfortable; lovingly he would describe his new method of impaling felons.

‘I sever the head first, your Grace. The body is turned upside down and a spike driven upwards through the neck. I place the head between the legs and fasten it there with a further spike. It is a humorous sight.’

The commonalty, she knew, cried outrage on these newfangled methods. But they feared the Butcher.

‘I am at your Grace’s service,’ he had said, when presented. The wet lip dropped upon her hand. She had withdrawn her fingers quickly, thinking to see them bloody from the salute …

Beside Jacquetta, a diminutive figure was spreading its skirts in homage. Lady Margaret Beaufort, with that plain narrow face old from the cradle. Clever at chess and life alike. Although she was dead Somerset’s kinswoman, she had taken the oath of fealty to Edward, and now danced with the rest. Elizabeth beckoned her closer.

‘How is your son, Henry Tudor, my lady?’

The narrow black eyes held hers calmly.

‘He’s well, my liege, and still at Pembroke with his uncle, Jasper. His Latin’s good, his Greek could be better, but he’s loyal. Loyal to all we revere.’

The last five words spoken so dispassionately brought in a wash of memory, the time of Marguerite. Men said that the French Queen was in Wales; sporadic risings in her favour continued to occur. Elizabeth, Queen of England, gripped the arms of her golden chair. She said coldly:

‘I understand that your husband died.’

Lady Margaret inclined her head in its stiff brocade hennin.

‘King Henry was graciously pleased to make him Earl of Richmond. I am therefore Countess in his memory. I have a new husband, Henry Stafford; I’m content.’

‘So your son is at Pembroke,’ pursued the Queen. ‘Lord Herbert governs there, does he not?’

‘We have much in common, your Grace.’ The sharp black eyes were amiable. ‘If it be true that your Grace’s sister Mary will wed Lord Herbert’s son.’

Such a devious wit! thought Elizabeth. I will cherish her; she may one day serve me well. Then she clapped her hands; the music wavered into silence. She rose carefully, lifting the heavy state robe. Ermine facings swelled the bodice and sleeves. She felt the icy bite of diamonds sliding against her neck. She stretched out her hand to Lady Margaret Beaufort.

‘We will join the King’s court. Madame, you and my mother shall bear my train.’

She descended from the dais and felt the drag of three ells of velvet lifted behind her as she proceeded smoothly across the lozenged tiles. As she passed, the women were like a field of flowers stricken by storm.

Within the King’s chambers, the courtiers were gathered, just as they had been for her coronation. Her lightning glance swept the separate features, saw that they all bore that look of stark obeisance overlying duty, indifference, or hatred. She had marked those same faces, with their transparent expressions, before.

Her introduction to court after the Council meeting at Reading when Edward had proclaimed their marriage, had been an ordeal. Edward’s younger brother George of Clarence had taken her by the hand. Fair, petulant and plump, his eyes were veiled by outrage, the resentment shared by all the old nobility. At Edward’s bidding he had led her before the Council, his hand moist on hers, mumbling oafish response to her own courtesy, and bemused by his brother’s apparent madness. At her coronation George had been waiting again, unhappily riding a horse up and down Westminster Hall, with Norfolk, Marshal of England, ready to precede them to the ceremony. Waiting, like the rest of England’s peerage, for Elizabeth, the Queen!

She had stood in her place of estate between the Bishops of Durham and Salisbury, her head ringing from the cheers of an obedient multitude, her eyes dazed by the pageant colours that blazed from London Bridge to St. Thomas’s Chapel, where the singing soared to split the roof; throat dry from the costly sand sprinkled for her safe coming, she had suffered gladly the weight of the royal purple about her shoulders, the prick of the diadem upon her brow. She would have suffered them had the robe been lead, the diadem fire. If only for the look on Warwick’s face! That impotent wrath, sourer than month-old milk; it warmed her with delight.

Anthony her brother had been regal in new velvet, and smiling subtly when she looked his way. The sisters were happy; Margaret was married to Tom Maltravers, and there were betrothals well assured: sweet Kate to Harry Buckingham; Anne to Lord Bourchier, son of the Earl of Essex, Eleanor to Anthony Grey de Ruthyn, son of the Earl of Kent. Mary should have Lord Herbert’s heir, and Jacquetta Lord Strange of Knockyn. Martha would be the wife of Sir John Bromley, lord of Bartomley and Wextall in Shropshire.

I wrought all this. So thought Elizabeth, as she extended her hand to William Lord Hastings, the King’s close friend, one-time partner in licentiousness. She knew more than they realized; the past drinking forays, the past women. Then Lord Stanley and Sir William knelt to her, their eyes speaking of readiness to serve.

And there was Thomas Fitzgerald Desmond, fresh from Ireland. Even when he had bent to kiss her hand that maddening, mocking smile of his remained. Disproportionate rage made her long to strike it from his face.

They had all been there that day; even Morton with his forked beard, eyes hard as agates and never a word out of place. Today Morton was gone from court, but none knew where, and he was unmissed in the throng that waited to greet their Queen after her deliverance from childbed. She moved through the chamber, and the King came, almost stumbling from his dais in eagerness to greet her. She gave him the meekness that he loved, seeing the courtiers as a blur – Hastings, controlling his spleen with a wavery smile; George of Clarence, trying not to scowl, and, expressionless, the youngest brother, Richard of Gloucester. Fourteen years old and of no account; lately of Warwick’s household. She looked swiftly about her for Warwick, seeking to enjoy his tortured rage; but the King was pressing her close, blocking her view. His lips were a warm song on her cheek. ‘Blessed be God for your deliverance,’ he whispered. He turned, then, and with an arm about her shoulder, her narrow, arrogant shoulder, cried to the assembly: ‘Blessed be God!’

Rage was alien to the Earl of Warwick. He was unsure whether to show or to conceal it, to vent it by kicking his hound or his page, or to sublimate it through icy dignity, although the past three years had shown him that dignity was not enough. He was a stone in a millrace, tossed into confusion. All the women he had known – his wife, Neville and Beauchamp of ancient Plantagenet line, his gentle daughters, Isabel and Anne – had set him no pattern for dealing with this particular blight. Little Isabella Woodville. God’s Blood! he reminded himself: the Queen of England. Only God could have forecast this. Or the Lord of Evil himself.

He paced the King’s antechamber, fingers clasped whitely on his dagger’s hilt, and, thought savagely of days when he and Edward together had kept men waiting on audience, just as he, Warwick, was now forced to cool his heels. New fury mingled with old as Westminster Clock boomed twice. A whole hour wasted; Edward was doubtless dallying with – the Queen of England. Like the kiss of plague, the past three years settled on him, striking sickly at his bowels. He sought comfort in the thought of the common people’s love. They thronged the streets for a sight of his magnificence. For them his door was ever open on six succulent oxen roasting for a breakfast; his household rule was to turn no man away. All were free to hack their fill. Plump chops, haunches of venison, vanished as under the breath of locusts. It was a small price to pay, for the commons’ love. Louis of France had openly called him ‘Le conduiseur du royaume’, but did he still? Louis had been more than annoyed at the betrothal of the King’s sister to the heir of Burgundy. And Warwick felt himself to have been used, sent, grim-humoured, as the ambassador for this match. Sentiment … because the King was indebted to Burgundy. The Earl spat on the floor. God’s Blood! He said it aloud this time. There had been no home for sentiment at Towton and Mortimers Cross.

The door opened suddenly and Edward burst in, with his fool and a troupe of minstrels. He was laughing. Warwick bent the knee, and thought: that motleyed jester would wear the crown less lightly …

He answered the King’s greeting, then said abruptly: ‘I must speak privily with you,’ over the tuneless twanging of the lutanist, the fool’s mad rhyming cries.

Edward clapped his hands and the entertainers ran, the drummer rolling his instrument, the fool somersaulting high and cleverly into the air. The King threw himself into a chair, gestured for wine which Warwick poured. The Earl was surprised at the trembling of his own hands.

‘Well, my lord!’ said the King gently. He was very slightly drunk, flushed and handsome. ‘It’s months since we had privy audience. Sup with me.’

Warwick shook his head, his mouth tightly drawn. Edward went on pleasantly: ‘I’m glad to see you, cousin. We must discuss my sister’s wedding. I have commissioned the New Ellen; a fine ship, a beautiful vessel, to protect Margaret even against the assaults of the Hanse traders’ craft. You shall accompany her to Burgundy.’

The sick feeling in Warwick’s belly grew. He said:

‘Your Grace knows that this will alienate Louis for ever?’

‘Bah!’ replied Edward. ‘King Spider is all mumblings and threats. Together we can woo him, eh, my lord?’

‘It is not only Louis who has ceased to love us,’ said Warwick distantly. ‘Ferdinand of Spain is still angry.’

More than angry, he added to himself. His emissaries had reported Isabella’s curses. Spurned by the English King!

‘I have made my match,’ said Edward. The smile had left him, and his eyes were stormy. They held Warwick’s, a warning. Say no more, my lord. Speak not of my Queen! None the less, the Earl’s pride, seething like an ill-digested dinner, rose and fermented. He said: ‘By the Rood, Ned! Never did I think you would deal thus with me and mine!’

‘How so?’ Edward watched Warwick’s pacing, strongly irritated. These Nevilles made their own orders of chivalry. Elizabeth’s kin would never address him whilst walking about. They, unlike this strutting, choleric minister, revered his kingship.

‘Be still, sir,’ he cried. ‘Address your sovereign.’

Warwick turned on his heel, rich robes lifting like a banner.

‘I count it loss,’ he said, ‘that George, my nephew, should forfeit such estates as belong to the Duke of Exeter’s daughter. Can you deny …’

Icily, Edward cut him short. ‘I deny nothing. The Queen’s son, Thomas Grey, weds Exeter’s maid. Her estates are his by my decree. Concern yourself no more with it.’

‘The lady was promised to my nephew. And that’s not all. Why was my kinsman Mountjoy asked to resign as Treasurer of England?’

Colder still, Edward said: ‘My Queen’s father, Earl Rivers, is Treasurer. And he carries the position right well.’

Be gone, Warwick told the violent griping pain in his belly. He stared at the King, who took a pear from a dish and bit into it. Warwick felt his control slipping away under the look from those careless eyes. Pride forbade that he should mention past fellowship, old debts, but these were implicit in his voice.

‘I sometimes wonder,’ he said slowly, ‘how best I may serve your Grace. It seems there are new rules of obedience to the Crown: those who serve it least are best rewarded.’

The King leaped up, throwing the pear away. Sober and furious, he faced the Earl squarely.

‘You speak against my Queen’s family?’

Warwick, shuddering with the past hour’s repressed rage, said thickly: ‘Why! I speak against all my mortal enemies, who lie about the King’s person. Earl Rivers and his knavish son, Anthony – and John, whom you saw fit to marry to my aged aunt – and Herbert, Devon, scoundrels both! I watch them fawning like curs, draining your strength and treasure. While my own folk go in the shadow, robbed of your Grace’s favour through no fault but loyalty …’

‘Enough! God’s Blessed Lady!’ cried Edward. ‘My lord, you strain my mercy to a thread. Never would I have thought you ingrate, traitor … what of your brother, then? Didn’t I make him Archbishop of York? Translated from lowly Exeter to please you?’

‘To placate me,’ said Warwick sullenly.

‘And John, your other brother – is he not Earl of Northumberland?’

‘Yes, Sire,’ said Warwick insolently. ‘For a season, mayhap!’

They stared at one another. The Earl had gone further than any dared, gambling on the respect once won in bloody, footsore days. But Edward had other, later memories, and they rankled.

‘All know–’ fury gathered – ‘that after my royal banquet for the Bohemian knights, when fifty courses were eaten, there was one who essayed himself more wealthy than the King. Have you forgotten that?’

Warwick’s face reddened darkly. He had been unable to resist temptation, not so much to insult Edward but as a thrust at the flaunting Woodvilles. At his house, the Bohemians, marvelling, had dined on sixty courses. He flew to counter-attack, saying the first thing in his mind.

‘Has your Grace forgotten the time and care spent by me in nurturing the Duke of Gloucester?’

He hated saying it. Dickon had been happy at Middleham, confused and shattered to find his time there ending so suddenly. Dickon, the precious pawn!

Coldly the king replied: ‘Yes! Well, my brother no longer usurps a place in your house, or eats you out of livelode …’ and wanted to bite back his words. Yet in that instant he recalled a rumour; Warwick had invited Richard and George to a great festival, making much of them, perchance pouring sedition in their ear. George, for one, was very susceptible … He tore his thoughts back to Warwick’s reply.

‘Gloucester ate little,’ said the Earl. ‘It was joy and privilege to have him under my roof.’

The two lordly glances met again, both shadowed with heavy regret. The moment passed.

‘We have said enough,’ said the King. Warwick bowed; when he straightened Edward was seated again, and the afternoon sun had moved to gild his head. Memory, pride and loss mingled to choke Warwick.

‘I would have your Grace’s permission to retire to my estates,’ he said. ‘I have affairs to see to, and the court wearies me.’

‘You have my permission,’ said Edward stonily. The door closed softly, and he was alone. Had he not been King, he would have rushed after Warwick, crying: ‘My lord, come back!’ conjuring the old times, sharing laughter, planning fresh feats. But Warwick had slighted Bess’s family, and the Devil could have him. I care not, he thought, if he is gone for a twelve-month. Yet some unfinished business lingered with him, stirred by the recent conversation. He summoned a page.

‘Bring me the Duke of Gloucester.’

Richard Plantagenet, the King’s youngest brother, entered shortly. Young, dark, slender, with an unobtrusive sadness that hung about him like chains. His clothes were shabby and unfashionable; his doeskin thighboots were rubbed to a sheen. His face betrayed little of the joy he felt at being summoned to the presence. The court had already taught him to conceal emotion.

He had one friend in the household; Francis Lovell, a youth of about his own age. But Francis was away for an indefinite time, at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire. There was no one, nothing. Only Earl Warwick, adored Warwick, who had cherished him at Middleham; Warwick, who had changed so horrifyingly. Richard kissed his brother’s hand and rose, and in the moments before Edward spoke, his thoughts returned to Middleham. The North, the clean, beloved North, with its days of hunting and hawking and prayer amid the sweeping winds. The days of mastery; the French and Latin, the dialectics and the courtly skills. And Anne. Even now she would be waiting for her dancing lesson in the little round turret room. Whom would she dance with now? She would be growing womanly, out of the sight of his loving eyes. There was no one, nothing. The days were gone, and the nights, when he and Warwick would sit man to man before the Hall’s bright fire. There they would discuss war and philosophy, strategy and myth, and Warwick had never sneered or patronized Richard’s halting theories, being swift to compliment him on any mark of wit or understanding. That Warwick had ceased to exist, the night of the banquet.

He remembered it well; how could he ever forget it? The feast had been in celebration of the enthronement of Warwick’s brother as Archbishop of York. Anne and her sister Isabel had been present; their eyes had admired Richard, resplendent in new velvet with the proud order of the Garter shining at his knee and breast. There was a thunderous crowd present and food enough to serve the whole City. Sixty-two cooks had laboured over a hundred roast oxen, six wild bulls, four thousand sheep, pigs and calves, five hundred stags, four thousand swans, and countless sweets and subtleties. Marchpane saints sported upon silver dishes, and Samson in spun-sugar pulled down a honeycomb temple. Richard realized later how this effigy had symbolized Warwick’s own desires: the Earl the Samson and the temple Edward’s court.

He had drunk a quantity of wine; Warwick had kept his hanap filled. This was a departure, as the Earl, at Middleham, had lectured him upon the perils of drunkenness. Coupled with the noise, the heat, and Anne’s presence by his side, the wine had sent his head spinning. He had smiled at all that Warwick said, until that dreadful, shattering conversation had turned his brain ice-cold.

‘Look you, Dickon! The King your brother has no time for us these days. That woman makes him wanton, careless. It’s meet you turn your back upon him now and follow me. I’ll give you high estates, and more …’

Then Warwick’s piercing, reckless eyes had rested upon Anne, so sweet and unknowing in her green gown.

‘It’s no secret, Richard, how you love!’ said the Earl, laughing.

Then Richard had risen from the board, swaying a little, to say stiffly:

‘I must have mistaken you, sir. I thought you to say I should betray the King.’ And had sat down again, feeling sick.

Warwick, clasping him about the shoulder, had whispered terrible things, about a new day dawning, and the danger to England through the King’s mad policies. That it was left to the Nevilles and their adherents to set the kingdom straight. Plantagenet was fast being disgraced by these Woodville commoners, this machinating Queen. Richard must set spurs and ride after righteousness. He must put off the King. The evening had ended in despair. Writhing, Richard could have taken his dagger gladly and slain Warwick, but chivalry forbade it; he had taken the Earl’s meat and drink. Dimly he heard Anne’s voice, felt her hand on his.

‘Why, Dickon? What ails you, sweet Dickon?’

She was too young; he could not tell her that her father, the man he trusted most, had made nonsense of that trust. Warwick, his god, now gloated on treason. He dragged himself out of these black thoughts; Edward was asking him questions.

‘… and have you seen the new babe? Little Bess, the pretty poppet! Have you not a sweet and comely niece?’

He answered with difficulty, thinking of the child, who looked like any other child, and the Queen her mother, whose eyes burned him with contempt. Francis Lovell had said this was purely fancy, but Richard knew otherwise.

Edward looked his brother over carefully. His heart mellowed. He should pass more time with him; the boy looked downcast and his clothes were disgracefully dull. Unlike Tom Grey, Bessy’s son, whom he had seen that day arrayed in saffron silk.

‘How do you spend your time? In the tiltyard? Shooting? I trust you pay attention to your letters.’

Tilting. Shooting. Yes. In the thrust of the longbow, the thrum of the axe, there was comfort. The other young knights were wary of the skills that Warwick had taught him. Richard fought like the Boar, his own blazon.

‘You must have new garments,’ said Edward. The boy was the image of their dead father – it made his heart ache briefly, and he wandered among memories.

‘Do you remember the gloves I brought you? When you and George were lodging in London with the Pastons?’

‘Green,’ said Richard. ‘With the White Rose on the cuffs. I have them still.’

‘How you hated that tutor!’ mused the King. ‘Blotting your Latin with tears, both you and George …’

‘I have forgotten nothing,’ said Richard. ‘You brought us gifts and comforted us. You were called by God to win England from Lancaster. At Towton and Mortimers Cross; you were, and are, my loving brother, and praise God, my King.’

He raised eyes black with worship. Edward blinked.

‘Aye!’ he said, pleased. He wondered whether to ask Richard about George, who, as everyone knew, hankered after Warwick’s eldest daughter Isabel, and whose loyalty was therefore suspect. He decided against it, and said:

‘You will soon be grown. Able to minister to my affairs in the courts of justice, and ride on campaign.’

There was that look of gratitude again, almost frightening in its passion. The youth was too serious; no frivolity. To Edward this seemed wrong. He should be dancing, gaming, and soon there should be mistresses. These thoughts brought on a fierce lust for Elizabeth.

‘So!’ he said, hastily, and stretched his hand again for Richard’s salute. ‘Be gone, now. Amuse yourself.’

The young Duke left without a word, and Edward extended himself upon a day-bed. Soon, the Queen would enter and come to him. It was uncanny – some days there was no need for him to summon her. It was as if she knew his wishes; the mystical implications of this made his flesh crawl pleasurably.

Within five minutes he was watching her disrobe. The sunlight gleamed upon her whiteness. At his leisure, while the afternoon danced and ebbed like a wanton, he got her again with child.

‘Tell me again,’ said Elizabeth.

She was fatigued. There had been a revel that evening, and dancing, which her heavy body could not enjoy. Edward was still closeted with her father and brother and the other ministers in the King’s privy chamber. She had looked forward to being unrobed by Renée and sinking into sleep. But Margaret Beaufort had craved audience – a matter of urgency, she said – and now sat at the Queen’s feet, fresh as if it were dawning, unruffled, keen-witted. She had done with childbearing, she was often heard to declare, as if she were an old woman. Her eyes roved expressionlessly over Elizabeth’s heavy roundness.

‘Say again, my lady. My wits are dull tonight.’ The windows were open but it was still stifling in the Tower apartments. The rooms were too narrow; a pungent mist rose from the summer Thames, but Greenwich and Sheen were being sweetened so she must endure it. Sometimes she thought of Bradgate. Bradgate was hers again, but she had not been back. Lady Margaret leaned close, casting an eye over the attendant ladies. Most of them were dozing or working intently on their tapestry.

‘My informant is reliable,’ she said softly. ‘My clerk.’

‘So?’

‘Reynold Bray.’ The narrow black glance was amused. ‘These clerks! They go like church mice, soft and docile. They weasel in and out of the most privy conferences, bringing back tidings like snips of cheese. No great lady should be without them.’

At the news that Elizabeth owned no such servants, she pursed her thin mouth, shocked.

‘It would honour me should your Grace require my man at any time to work her bidding, were it in his own blood.’

Elizabeth said carefully: ‘Why should I need such service?’

As if in chapel, Lady Margaret bowed her head.

‘All have enemies.’

Instantly alert, Elizabeth said: ‘Tell me their names,’ and Margaret glanced about, maddeningly covert. Whispering, she replied: ‘Hastings – he would bring you down an it were possible. And the Deputy Lieutenant of Ireland …’

Elizabeth froze. So Desmond’s laughter was not the mere crackling of thorns; there was real malice beneath it. Small wonder he had incensed her so with his smile; her instinct had not lied.

She said: ‘Recount me what your church mouse has learned.’

‘Not here, Madame. It’s better from his own lips. If your Grace will accompany me …’ She cast waspishly about at the drowsy gentle-women. ‘I will support you; ’tis not far.’

Minute and upright, with many obsequious gestures, she led the way to her own apartments. In an antechamber, Bray was writing at a lectern. A pale and shadowy man; anonymous. At the Queen’s entrance he dropped his quill, yet neatly so that no ink scattered; he drew a low obeisance, flourishing a soiled kerchief. She looked about her; this day everything revolted – the smell of dust from a pile of parchments in the corner; dog-hairs on a worn cloak. The child kicked fiercely beneath her girdle, as if it were distressed by the smell of sweat and stale beer.

‘By St. Denis, Master Bray, you live like a hog!’

He raised a white face, he begged her pardon and that of Lady Margaret.

‘Sir,’ said the Countess, ‘recount to her Grace the conversation between Earl Warwick and Lord Desmond.’

He smirked and twisted his hands together. ‘I was saying my morning office,’ he began. ‘The chapel window was open, likewise that of my lord Warwick …’

‘Come, Sir Clerk!’ cried Elizabeth. ‘I care not how you heard it. Speak, or I’ll have you whipped.’

The smirk vanished. He said quickly: ‘Your Grace. My lord spoke first; he said: “Tom” (so he calls Desmond) – “Tom, can you not influence the King? He loves you well and will hearken to you.” ’ He shot a narrow glance upward. ‘Your Grace, ’tis almost treason…’

‘Would you lose your tongue?’ Now she found she could be ruthless and savage, like the Butcher of Worcester.

‘He said: “The Queen wastes our sovereign. This rift with Spain and Savoy gives me bad dreams. Through her, our realm is plunged into vulnerability. The Queen is an ill-omened person.” ”

Through her growing rage she felt a little chill. The clerk continued:

‘He asked my lord of Desmond if there was any means by which he could persuade the King to … to put your Grace away.’

‘And what said Desmond?’

‘I could not hear.’

‘But he did not disagree?’

The clerk spread his hands, a yea-nay gesture. She thought, curdled with fury: I’ll have Desmond’s head, and I will see the blood of Warwick. Cursed Warwick! The child plunged within her as if pricked by memory carried in her own blood: Warwick’s men unhanging the Goliath tapestry; Desmond’s smile. The two things oddly mingled. Lady Margaret’s hard black eyes were upon her, her hand upon her arm.

‘Your Grace,’ she murmured, ‘shall I bid my mouse hide in the wainscot a few more weeks?’

Speechless, she nodded, and quit the chamber where Bray mopped and scraped in duty. Flashes of fire ran through her belly. I must be calm, she told herself. Or I shall miscarry Edward’s child. Sometimes she hated him for making her carry the child through the sweltering summer. The burden added viciousness to her thoughts. She felt the weight of enemies all around her, synonymous with this pull of flesh within flesh. Jacquetta of Bedford was constantly at her side, feeding her capers in honey for pains in the womb, and violet syrup for her throbbing head. The King’s ardour was undiminished at the sight of her swollen body. He possessed her almost nightly, though now with the tenderness of a nurse. Often she caught herself wanting to scream: ‘Leave me be, you lustful Yorkist ram!’ She clung to discretion. The glitter in her blue eyes he mistook for love. Jacquetta smiled, mixing little simples, murmuring quiet consolations.

Thomas, the Queen’s firstborn, approached manhood, and she saw John in him, a dull, aching memory. But he was arrogant where John had been courteous. He was rumbustious, and bullied the young pages in tiltyard and Hall. He mocked the King’s brothers: Richard of Gloucester, and, when he dared, George of Clarence, for Clarence was sixteen and owned his own manor, spending little time at court. One of Warwick’s toadies? she wondered, and watched him when she could.

One day Edward, impulsive and restless, burst into her chamber with the announcement that he was riding out. He said it was time to cast an eye over his southern provinces, to attend the oyer and terminer in a few shires, and to pray at a shrine or two on his progress.

‘Would that you were coming with me, sweet heart,’ he said. Hands in her hair, warm lips on her throat. She extricated herself with a little laugh, weak with concealed relief.

‘Our child must not be born upon the road, Ned,’ she agreed. ‘How long will you be gone?’

‘Oh, weeks, days,’ he said vaguely. ‘I leave the court in your hands. Send for more minstrels; the Flemish are skilled in song.’

Something awoke in her, and stirred. She said: ‘Is there not more to ruling than music, my lord? Are there no matters of policy which I should know? While you’re away, should I not be aware of statecraft?’

He laughed indulgently, picked up a tapestry frame in one great hand, admired the birds and flowers, and set the frame down.

‘Pretty one,’ he said. Then, reconsidering: ‘Aye, well. My ministers will attend you daily. I shall take Hastings with me, and your father, and Anthony perhaps. No?’ seeing her face fall. ‘Very well. Your father shall stay. But there are offices I must confer before I leave – the Deputy Lieutenancy of Ireland for one …’

She said sharply: ‘That is Desmond’s commission!’

‘Yes. But I intend to confer greater honours upon him. He’s wasted in Ireland.’

She said casually: ‘Have you thoughts for his successor?’

Laughing at this new interest in policy, he caressed her. ‘Have you, my love? Come, you shall choose. A worthy supporter of all my causes to rule over those blackthorn bogs. Give me your vote.’

Like a wild vision the ruthless, deathshead countenance of her most faithful servant came to mind.

‘Tiptoft is loyal,’ she said.

He roared. ‘Why, sweeting, a fierce choice. And yet …’ He mused, subtly enlightened, stroking his fair strong chin.

‘He would serve you well,’ she said almost inaudibly.

For a moment he studied her. She was pale today, her long throat like a windflower stem, her lips like two red petals folded firm. And John of Worcester would and could hold down the chanting peat-bards royally.

‘So be it, lady,’ he said. ‘Tiptoft is our choice. Desmond shall be relieved; he can make merry in his Irish castle until I return.’

She pressed close. ‘Return soon,’ she said. She yielded her mouth, feeling his hard kiss, warm, insensitive, tasting the salt of his passion on her lips.

At Westminster, she held in her hands the Great Seal. It was heavy, with a solemn dark glow about it, and the arms and images were deeply ingrained like the runes on some mysterious talisman. The Seal! the emblem of omnipotence. The child moved fiercely within her; she saw her pearl-trimmed girdle flutter and rise slightly as if to touch the Seal in approval. About her stood a small and silent assembly: her father, Sir Richard Woodville, new-made Earl Rivers and Treasurer of England; Lady Margaret Beaufort; Doctor Morton; and Jacquetta, with her devil-virgin’s smile. Elizabeth looked down. As if at the touch of her eyes the man kneeling before her raised his head and fixed her with that dreadful, thrusting, competent glance.

‘Sir John Tiptoft.’

‘Your Grace.’ He would not release her from that look, or from culmination of a plan that had moved too quickly, burned too savagely. ‘All is ready, highness.’

The clerk, familiar, whey-faced Reynold Bray, stepped forward with a long roll of parchment. She cast her eye over it; the word treason leaped black and plain to see. It was a most unconstitutional document; but in this she was her own parliament and court of law; vanity was the judge and rage the executioner. And for this end she must know more, hear more. She must feel the spark that lit her tinder. Tell me, Sir Clerk, the words my lord of Desmond lately used to shame us. She must have those words, to counter the Seal’s dreadful coolness under her hands.

‘My friend (who must be nameless) heard them clearly. They were riding for boar. The beast was grounded in a thicket, and the chase halted. The King was thirsty; he asked Desmond for wine, and they spoke together, merrily.’

She could envisage them: Desmond, handsome, chaffing the King for his want of drink; the white teeth, the laughter.

‘His Grace asked Desmond, straight, without dissembling, what he thought of the royal marriage. Desmond answered with a jest, but the King pressed him: “Come, man to man!” Then Desmond said: “Twould have been better had your Grace wed a foreign princess. The barons are wroth at your choice.” ’

Bray faltered. Elizabeth gripped the Seal’s warming roundness.

‘It’s disrespect to you, my liege.’

‘We must hear all,’ said Tiptoft commandingly. The whites of his protruding eyes were tinged with red. Bray cleared his throat and continued.

‘Desmond said: “Your Grace has laid yourself open to some raillery. The common people speak of the Queen thus: they raise their vessels and drink to the princely stables …” ’

‘And?’ The Seal seemed alive; it was beginning to burn her hands.

‘And … the King’s Grey Mare! It is a jest,’ Bray said seriously. ‘Rooted in your Grace’s first marriage to Lord Grey … the King’s grey mare–’ as if explaining to children – ‘Mare, hard ridden, nightly.’

Warily he looked at the Queen’s face. What he saw there put him swiftly on his knees.

‘God’s pardon, your Grace,’ he whispered. ‘You did ask me, and I told all.’

The parchment cracked beneath her fingers. The room spun, and there was a bitter taste in her mouth, shreds of blinding light before her eyes. Through all this her wit told her that it was not so much Desmond’s seeking to alienate Edward from her – it was Desmond’s laughter. Now he should laugh himself on to a scaffold. Tiptoft was watching her closely. The commission was his; he was ready to leave for Ireland within the hour. She smelled burning wax and watched the gobbet of red fall at the foot of Desmond’s death warrant. She firmed the Seal carefully in the red; it spread and hardened, the devices showing plain and unassailable. Tiptoft’s bulging eyes sought hers.

‘I charge you, Constable, to see this carried out.’

‘Within the week, your Grace.’

‘Let no more treason such as this come from the lips of his family.’

‘He has two sons, my liege. Shall they be punished also?’

She nodded, as the hideous face tipped upwards and the wet lip fastened on her shaking fingers. Then he was gone, swiftly, leaving the chamber still spinning and heaving about her. Heat seared her loins. She felt her mother’s arm supporting her. So her time was now, in hot summer. She would soon be rid of her burden, and Desmond, in some lonely Irish cell of execution, of his head. And his two sons punished… but they would be only little boys, younger even that Thomas and Dick! She looked uncertainly towards the door now closed behind the Butcher. Then pain stabbed again, lancing through her groin and stomach. She gasped. The King’s Grey Mare! May they all suffer, the pain told her. It is legitimate and right …