1485–7

Jasper will breed for us a Dragon,

Of the fortunate blood of Brutus is he,

A Bull of Anglesey to achieve,

He is the hope of our race …

Welsh Song (ca. 1484)

The glory was still with him. He sat in the Bishop of London’s Palace, while outside, September, as if in penance for wild August, brightened the city with a day of gold. Like a sovereign insect in the hive’s deepest cell he sat, able at last to determine the things which excitement and trepidation had snarled together in a wanton skein. For the first time in many days he could catch his breath; the swift nightmare and the ecstasy of conquest were equal; the nightmare fled and the glory remained. Through the high window’s diamond panes the sun sparkled. One dusty beam played downward and rested on Henry’s head so that he was at the end of a tunnel of light. He felt his mind restoring itself to order and to plan. Part of the glory was that, thanks to the Stanleys, he had quit himself well. In truth they had done it all; they and Northumberland had placed the day in Henry’s lap. He thought: I am indebted. A little of the glory fled, leaving watchfulness, and an irony that made his long lips smile. They will expect fair payment, he told himself. And what shall I give them? Only the honour of being ever under my eyes. For if they betrayed one king, what might they not work upon his successor?

They would do nothing against him, for they would never have the chance. Before him on the table lay Richard’s crown, taken from a thorn bush in the field and placed on Henry’s head with great drama and reverence by Lord Stanley. Henry took it up and held it in the sun-shaft. It was rather misshapen; the side of the slender ellipse was dented almost beyond repair. There was the half print of a hoof in the soft gold, and one of the delicate trefoils was broken off. Although it had been cleaned it still bore, deeply ingrained, traces of blood and mud. He lifted it higher; it weighed very little; it had been built to circle a battle-helm. The hard joyless glory left him as he stared at the ruined bauble, his imagination augmenting it with a head, a face. A raised visor, a white face distorted with fury. He would not easily forget that face. Richard was dead, hacked almost to pieces by Stanley’s men. Yet even thinking of that last charge when the demented figure on the white horse came straight for him, started the sweat upon his hands so that the crown moved in their grasp.

He had been no more than a bowslength away; so near that he could see the hairs on the muzzle of the great white horse, the frog of the deathly hoof raised to strike. He could see the bloody whites of Richard’s eyes, the froth-filmed teeth, the razor edge of the whirling axe, that red-edged axe shaped to shear a man in twain. He could hear the screams of ‘Richard!’ – the tribal cries of the Household – the blind exaltation of the handful of men who rode behind the Boar on that last lunatic charge, their lances like teeth, their armour running blades of light. Across Redmore Plain at him they came, a sweeping wave of menace. He had thought, sharply: So this is my end. Standing on the little knoll whence he had watched the battle thus far in safety, he had clutched at Jasper’s mailed arm with frantic fingers. Then Richard was almost upon him; he had felt his tongue cleaving to his palate; shamefully, secretly, had felt the spurt of wetness on his thigh. He had watched his standard-bearer, William Brandon, go down to meet the charge and be swept away by a blow from that axe, the Dragon falling, undulating gracefully, its scarlet deepened by Brandon’s blood. The giant Cheney had stepped out to do battle and Richard had sliced him through the throat. And Henry had taken his first pace, backwards, to fly, anywhere, to bury himself in the bushes, never to see or speak again.

Then Sir William Stanley had come, so tardy that Henry would always resent him for it. At the very last of last moments he had ridden up with a sparkling pristine force, red roses and fresh mounts, like actors on cue but only just. They had smashed into the flank of Richard’s little company, translating it in moments from a monster of hell to a toil of severed limbs and massacred flesh. He had not watched while they killed the King; not through any squeamishness but only through the necessity to turn and vomit his relief into the grass. None saw; the pallor he later presented was marked down as reverence to the moment when Stanley crowned him in the field.

He set the crown slowly down upon the table. As soon as it left his fingers he felt warm, for it had been like touching a ghost. He would have a new crown fashioned, a crown of greater magnificence. Emeralds in honour of the Dragon’s green ground. He looked up to where his banner hung. The Dragon was so powerful, with its rippling body and serpentine tail, its fierce gory colour. Men said that the Dragon had originally come from the sea; so it possessed all the inexorable tumult of the ocean. Against the sea even fire was powerless.

He pressed his bare bony hands together, and squinted into the floating gold sunlight. Like a myriad motes of debris in the bright ray, the weird talismen and beliefs, his since childhood, arose, pushing back all uncertainty. In one trembling moment omnipotence crystallized, and he was wise enough to know he must work to enslave it. The first lesson was to profit from the mistakes of others. Richard Plantagenet had trusted his ministers and was now bloody defiled carrion in the mean house of the Greyfriars at Leicester. What of his predecessors? Where had their paths forked, their feet trodden in error? Detail, thought Henry, is the great instructor. On the table lay a pile of tomes, heavy ledgers bound with brass. The Household Books, the Grants from the Crown, the Privy Purse. The Docket Book, the Parliamentary Statutes. He pulled one near at random and opened it. The pages smelled musty, with a faint reek of incense. Even without looking at the rusty writing he would have known whose reign this was. From The Issue Rolls he read:

To John de Serrencourt, who came to witness Queen Margaret’s coronation and report the same: thirty-three marks.

A hundred pounds to be paid out of the customs on wool and skins at Southampton, to William Andrews, for his services during his attendance on the Queen in foreign parts.

Skipping a few pages, he read:

To Jean de Jargean, minstrel, 50 livres for his succour of the King in great melancholy.

To the masters of Alchemy, 2001 to the manufacture of gold for the King’s pleasure.

Henry opened another book and read from the Acts of the Privy Council: ‘This day Wm Cleve, King’s chaplain and clerk of the works, made supplication for money to pay the poor labourers their weekly wage. This he has the utmost pain and difficulty to purvey.’

Slowly he closed both books. Dust rose and vanished. So, Henry. Men would not hear the later Henry miscall that saint, that dupe. Half-brother to Uncle Jasper, a vein of royalty to be cherished for Lancaster’s sake. This did not alter the fact that, according to the Books, he had left the realm almost bankrupt.

He reached for another tome. Gayer writing here, bright with gold leaf

Writ the feast of St. Crispin and Crispinian, the sixteenth year of King Edward the Fourth:

To John Goddestande, footman, ten marks; for purveying of six ells of sarcenet and three of velvet, and two counterpanes, cloth-of-gold, furred with ermines, for the pleasure of Mistress Shore.

Henry sucked in his lip. Whoremaster. His righteousness was tempered by not a little envy. For a moment he grudged Edward the years of hot beds and willing bodies; he remembered his own stunted youth. He had been driven to learning and piety as a substitute for more earthly pleasures. Always subservient; to Uncle Jasper, Lord Herbert, Francis of Brittany. And yet there had been sweet moments. Maud Herbert had loved him truly, and of her he had had his pleasures, fleeting thing though it was. Maud still loved him and she was here with him in London. He would not, however, like Edward flaunt his concubine to the derision of Europe and the deficit of the Privy Purse. He would never on Crispin’s Day, when Harry of Lancaster had done so nobly at Agincourt, defile the Household Book with entries such as these. Particularly when he was wedded to Edward’s daughter…

He opened another ledger, thin and small. The reign of King Edward the Fifth. The bastard king; the king that never was. He looked blindly at the expenditure, clothing for knights, grants in preparation for the coronation. He stroked the book, and closed it, drawing another ledger, the latest, towards him, bending to a random page.

An annuity of £20 to Joan Peysmarsh for her good service to King Richard in his youth and to his mother.

To Master John Bently, clerk of poor estate, four pound to defray his expenses at Oxford University.

He pulled the Statute Book towards him. From it he learned that Richard had halved the Crown dues on eighteen cities, had forbidden the benevolence tax begun by Edward the Fourth; had loaded the poor with gifts and so doing had depleted the estate of many barons. He read on and was taken aback by what he saw. The lifting of taxes, together with the financing of Richard’s last battle, had brought the country again to the brink of ruin.

To Katherine Bassingbourne, goodwife of York, a pension. For my Lord Bastard, two doublets of silk …

The Book closed of its own accord as his hand left it. The terrible face snarled under the lifted visor, the death-white horse reared. The bloody axe hung, ready to sever with its aching edge sinew and muscle and nerve. It was full time to forget this demon; this man whose mild writings could bring shameful fear to Henry, the Dragon of Cadwallader. He sat still, calling up his ancestors. The great Uther Pendragon and his greater son, Arthur, not dead but sleeping under green banners and silence. Down through a female line past Owen, the dreamers and warriors of Wales; through Llewellyn, Rhys, Gruffydd, Owain, Maredudd, Hywell, to the misted splendour of Cadell, Rhodri, Merfyn, and last, the Lady Ethil, of the Isle of Man. Although no herald had yet traced it, there was the belief that somewhere beyond Uther, Noah’s virtuous blood ran deep. Dragons, two by two …

‘I am immortal!’ said Henry the dreamer. While Henry the realist countered: ‘So I shall remain!’

A thump on the door made him quickly compose himself. He was reminded by the slither of halberds outside that he was safe in this lodging, as in all his lodgings. At his word a young man entered. He was impeccably liveried, flat cap on his head, high collar cutting into his gullet. On his breast was the royal insignia: H.R. and in his hand he bore a tall pike. Henry looked him over, pleased with his own innovation.

‘Well, Master Yeoman Warder?’

‘Bishop Morton is here, your Grace.’

Henry frowned. His long face grew lugubrious with annoyance but he did not chide the youth. Though it was vital that his whims, like his orders, should obtain, reiteration in this case served better than scolding.

‘Have you forgotten already? We are not ‘Your Grace’.’

The warder blushed. He tried to bow, but the stiff collar choked him. Strangling, he said: ‘Your Majesty.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Henry gently. ‘The term ‘Your Grace’ applies to Bishops and Earls and Dukes, a common thing. There is only one Majesty, as there is only one God. Bid the Bishop enter.’

Morton carried a heavy sheaf of papers and a little coffer worked with gold filigree.

‘You are tardy, my lord,’ said Henry.

‘Aye, but through no fault of mine. I thought I had taken the sweating sickness. Praise God, I still am whole.’

‘I myself have prayed against this sickness,’ said Henry. ‘Then, I thought: no Providence could be so cruel … I stayed here, with faith in my talisman.’ He indicated an oblong box, age-mildewed, hanging beneath the Dragon banner.

‘What is it, Sire?’

Opened by Henry, the box revealed a brittle bleached bone, with a few fragments of cartilage hanging twisted from one end.

‘The leg of blessed St. George.’ Morton genuflected dutifully, saying: ‘The sickness is bad in all parts; did you know that two mayors have died, and six aldermen? They fall like flowers. Yet I think the worst is over.’

‘So I can be crowned.’

‘Sire, you must be crowned. But there are certain matters to discuss – some of great importance.’

Henry tapped the Household Books with a forefinger.

‘The economy for one, I vow. By the Rood! the country is in a parlous state. You, as my Chancellor, must help me set it right.’

‘Taxes,’ said Morton succinctly. ‘Give me a little time, Sire. Trust my judgment.’

The heavy-lidded eyes and the old wattled ones met briefly. Morton’s were the first to look away.

‘What have you in your box?’ said Henry pleasantly.

‘A few of the traitor’s jewels.’ Morton tapped the rolls of parchment he held. ‘And here, the inventory of the larger goods.’

‘Let me see.’ Henry lifted the coffer’s lid. Delving, he said: ‘He was enamoured of finger-rings.’ He took out rubies, sapphires, enamelled flowers, and fitted them on to his fingers. His hands grew rich; the sunlight sought them out. Silently he heard the screams of the pale war-horse; saw the angry anguished face, the raised axe. He stared at them; they vanished.

He said softly: ‘Rings from a rebel. Did you bring my Statutes, Chancellor?’

‘I can send for them.’

Henry waved a bright, loaded hand. ‘Later. I only wished to see, writ plain, that my reign began the day before the battle. So that the Roll of Attainder on Richard and his followers may be valid.’

‘You are King, from the day before the battle, as we said. And I have the notes for the Attainder here, together with the list of those hanged directly after, at Leicester. Or beheaded, according to their station.’ Morton extended a roll. ‘Here is the list of those you pardoned: Surrey … Lincoln!’

He looked at Henry. ‘I was surprised, Sire. Lincoln was named Richard’s heir.’

He said: ‘I have offered Lincoln a place on my Council, where I may watch him best, until the day when his ambition brings him down. Lincoln will light the way to all Yorkist traitors still living. My lord, have I not told you…

The sentence drifted. Morton said gently:

‘That Tudor will vanquish Plantagenet?’

‘That Tudor must destroy Plantagenet,’ said Henry gravely. ‘Without fear or favour, by order and system. One by one, until, as the dying Cadwallader prophesied, we are supreme in England, and all other is wiped away.’

‘The heirs and offshoots are now gathered in,’ said Morton. ‘Would you learn of their disposal?’

‘One by one,’ said Henry, sitting back. ‘First: Warwick, from Sheriff Hutton. George of Clarence’s boy. How and where is he?’

‘The boy is almost an idiot,’ answered Morton. ‘Simple in the head; attainted for his father’s treason, yet a true Plantagenet. At your suggestion, the Tower has him now.’

‘Close?’

‘Tight guarded,’

‘And his cousin, my bride?’

Morton’s eye was almost merry. ‘I brought her with me today.’ He moved to the window and stood bulkily on tiptoe. ‘If you crane high, Sire, you will see her, walking in the garden.’

Henry did so, for a long time, his face close to the panes. Below, Bess paced like a sleepwalker; her companion, a tall swarthy girl, had a hand lightly under the Princess’s elbow. The first few yellow leaves drifted about them. The girl looked up at the window and Henry raised his hand. It was Maud Herbert; he smiled to see his one-time mistress escorting his future wife. Bess drew out a linen square and wiped her eyes.

‘Why does she weep?’ he said. Morton muttered.

‘She loved the traitor, her uncle,’ said Henry. It was not a question. ‘God grant that she comes virgin to my bed!’

‘I’m sure of it,’ said Morton loudly. ‘The question is, Sire, does she come to you a bastard? This is the issue. This is why I am here.’

Henry moved back to the table, and looked at the long yellow membrane unrolling in the Bishop’s hands. Words flung themselves briskly to his eye.

‘… that they lived together sinfully and damnably in adultery … all their issue being bastard and unable to inherit or claim anything by inheritance …’

‘Yes,’ he said after a while. ‘The Titulus Regius. I cannot wed a bastard.’

‘Yet you must wed Bess of York. To consolidate your claim. It is vital.’

‘Therefore I must repeal the Titulus Regius.’

‘At once, highness.’

‘And by so doing,’ said Henry slowly, ‘I shall legitimize all Edward’s children. I shall therefore restore King Edward the Fifth.’

He rose clumsily, knocking over the little coffer. Jewels flooded the table. He walked to where the Dragon hung, and fixed his desperate eye upon its storm-red curves. Cadwallader, shall all my striving come to naught? And Cadwallader might have answered, writhing his ancient bones: The truth must wound. Our heritage is not great enough to withstand the heirs of Edward the Third … Henry, your own line is flawed with bastardy.

‘The boys’ claim is better than my own,’ he said.

‘The boys are dead,’ replied Morton. Henry swung round.

‘What?’

‘In the mind of the people they are dead,’ said the Bishop. ‘The mind of the people is your stength. From shore to shore the word was spread. Mancini himself gave it to the Chancellor of France. Did you not hear?’

‘I deemed it rumour,’ Henry said quietly.

‘So it is. A strong rumour with a lion’s teeth. Richard Plantagenet, the attained usurper, had them done to death.’

‘Where are the boys?’

‘I can bring them to you, in a very few days.’ Morton picked up a ruby, held it to the light. ‘Or … I can turn rumour into truth.’

The Dragon shimmered, coiled its tail in a little draught. Minutes crawled by, like the slow sand of a dream. Then Morton asked: ‘Would you have peace in England?

A faint nod, watched by the Dragon.

‘Then Tudor must expunge Plantagenet. Lancaster must exorcize York. Utterly, until there is no figurehead left. No more ruin, no more decimation of the nobles …’

‘Would this happen?’ For the moment he was like a schoolboy, begging the answer to a test.

‘Children,’ said Morton heavily. ‘They are the most dire focus for uprising. Powerless yet malleable. And their father was greatly loved.’

‘Children,’ repeated Henry. ‘Holy God.’ He looked again at the Titulus Regius. Somewhere, Cadwallader’s old corpse moved, and he said: ‘Do it. Have it done.’

Morton stepped to the door, summoned one of the Yeomen. A sealed writing, prepared weeks earlier by the Bishop, changed hands, and the guard departed.

‘I have advised Sir James Tyrrel,’ Morton said evenly, returning to Henry’s side. ‘He is a cool, ambitious man. He will expect the general pardon, and a commission in France.’

‘He shall have both.’

He found himself trembling. He said firmly: ‘Now …

‘Sire?’

‘The Act of Titulus Regius must be repealed unread in both Lords and Commons. Its constitution must be forgotten; it solidified Richard’s claim. More, the Act must be destroyed.’ He went to the window again, beneath which Bess and Maud Herbert still walked. ‘Hear me. As Chancellor, you must see to this. All copies of the Act are forfeit from this day. On pain of dire punishment. We will have a great burning.’

‘It shall be done.’

‘Good.’ He turned again with a brittle smile. ‘What now? What other bird came within our net this month?’

Morton, peering at his roll, muttered his way down a list of names.

‘Sir Francis Lovell … he escaped the field. Bishop Stillington – half-crazed – to the Tower. Catesby, Speaker of the Commons, caught and hanged at Leicester. The Stafford brothers are in Sanctuary. We cannot touch them – yet. What else? We combed the North … Bess came from Sheriff Hutton with various women, among them Cicely, her sister. Catherine Woodville is in London. Sir Edward is your loyal man. Dorset (I mistrust him, he clings to his mother) is being brought from France this week. Ah, and there’s another royal bastard – John of Gloucester.’

‘The traitor’s son?’

‘Yea, Richard’s boy. Seventeen or so; of little note.’

‘My lord!’ Henry’s voice was sharp. ‘A royal bastard of little note?’

A Plantagenet, a King’s son. A livery mocking Henry’s claim.

‘What manner of youth is he?’

Morton said: ‘Hot. Vainglorious. And cast in his father’s image, to the life.’

‘I do not want him at my court.’ To have that face, that facsimile of certain shameful death under his eye; to confront it in hall and corridor would be insupportable.

‘Sire, lastly. The Roll of Attainder against Richard. How is it to be worded?’

‘All ways,’ said Henry rapidly. ‘Oppression, tyranny, persecution of the commons, of his wife, betrayal of his friends. See to it.’

‘And his greatest crime?’ persisted Morton. ‘Chapter and verse, your Majesty?’

‘No,’ said Henry slowly. ‘The evidence conflicts. Say only: “guilty of the shedding of infants’ blood”.’

Morton bowed. He looked at Henry, awed and gladdened. He had made himself a King.

At Greenwich, autumn rioted in parkland and pleasaunce. A dry rain of russet, saffron and rose floated down. The mornings were laden with sharp silver dews, transient mist. Beneath Elizabeth’s window a robin sang, bold and confidential, as if for her alone. There had never, she thought, been such a beautiful fall. Yet it seemed to be lasting for a year.

The sweating sickness was the reason why Bray, Morton’s spokesman, had advised her to wait at Greenwich. It was not safe yet for her to come again to London; folk were dropping in the streets, and no physician could cure the sickness. It was new; men said that the King’s mercenaries had brought it, a gaol-fever from France. Prayers were offered for the King’s safety, and Elizabeth added her own.

She learned a kind of patience. The battle was over, the enemy dead, like her rages. So she walked on leaves that were lovely in death, in gardens ravaged by the memory of Marguerite. Elizabeth waited, drawing her spirit into a tight coil until King Henry should bid her to him. Kindness clothed her; she spoke courteously to Grace, to Renée and the other servants. To them she seemed distant, alien; they did not recognize her as she was: a beach recently battered by a tidal wave. Years of longing, and now victory had been too much. One night she cried out from a pain in her head. In the morning her left hand was weak and stricken, her head shaken by occasional spasms. She was still slim and gaunt and burning, but not so brightly as before. Grace was full of fear; the touch of that feeble hand epitomized her own vague terrors. Elizabeth’s voice had softened too, feeding the dreadful dark unease, and augmenting another fear, equally strong.

For the twentieth time, she said: ‘Madame. Think you that John of Gloucester is safe?’

She could ask her anything now, and have a good reply, yet a comfortless one.

‘Mistress, how should I know? Was he in the battle?’

‘Nay. His father forbade it.’

‘Then he’s safe,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He is of no account, I told you. Stop weeping, Grace.’

Elizabeth gazed over the gold-flecked lawn. There had been tears shed here before, by a Queen whose lover was slain; a Queen comforted by a girl whose husband came running, blood-stained, with bad tidings … John. Ah, John. Again she put his face, his name away. It was more difficult here, and with this forced inactivity. Marguerite’s ghost was lively on the lawn. Through the walled archway she saw banners blazoned with the white daisy-flower and held by tall young men. A woman, small and slight, walked between the escort; the banners were grand, a Queen’s banners, and the woman’s dress was of fine French cloth, her headdress snowily starched. Elizabeth stared. A verse stole into her head, as if bidden to the moment.

Benedicite, what dreamed I this night …

Thy lady hath forgotten to be kind …

The ghost came right up to her, and made itself flesh. For Marguerite at Greenwich had been beautiful. Marguerite would not have carried a breviary wherever she went; more likely a lute, or a sword.

‘Greetings,’ said Margaret Beaufort, bestowing light kisses.

‘Countess.’ Elizabeth looked bewildered at the sudden panoply. Marguerites bloomed in profusion on the air. ‘I see you bear the daisy …

‘I thought it pretty. For Lancaster triumphant, and of course, for my name.’

Elizabeth took Margaret’s arm. ‘Come, be refreshed.’ The Countess picked delicately through the red leaves as she walked with Elizabeth. Her black eyes missed nothing, the wasted fingers of Elizabeth, the occasional twitch of her head.

‘You don’t look well, my lady,’ she said pleasantly, as, followed by the gaudy entourage, they went into the palace.

‘I am exceedingly well,’ replied Elizabeth. ‘I trust the sickness is over in London. I am anxious to see and rejoice with your victorious son. Felicitations, Madame, on your Henry.’

Margaret sipped a little wine brought to her by a page. She absently opened her breviary, and smiled. ‘It was preordained,’ she said smoothly. ‘Our dynasty shall endure for a thousand years.’

Elizabeth said: ‘He will get fine sons upon my daughter.’

Margaret did not answer; she was saying a Te Deum under her breath.

‘Margaret,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Countess. You have my word and consent to the marriage. When shall it be?’

‘Soon,’ said Margaret, gabbling away. Then she closed her breviary with a clap and smiled a sweet, tight smile. She sniffed at her wine-cup and said: ‘This drink’s too near the lees; is there no Rhenish?’

A steward behind Elizabeth’s chair, answered: ‘None left, your Grace,’ and Margaret raised her brows. Elizabeth thought: has she forgotten that my grant from Richard died with him? The last pension brought by John Nesfield was spent weeks ago. Yet she complains of poor wine in my house. She felt her cheeks flushing and welcomed the spurt of temper like a lover; it signalled the end of a weird apathy.

‘Madame!’ she said bitingly, ‘when my daughter weds your son …

‘King Henry the Seventh,’ Margaret interrupted.

‘Yes.’ Elizabeth frowned and forgot what she was about to say.

Margaret was glancing about the chamber, at the hangings, the carpets, the servants arrayed mutely at door and wall. She looked at Grace, who was kneeling beside Elizabeth, and gave her a flash of teeth, humourless as a sword.

‘Mistress. Do you know where your lady keeps her copy of the Titulus Regius?’

‘She does,’ said Elizabeth, the healthy rage renewed. ‘Grace, take my keys. Fetch the vile thing.’

In the hearth a few logs burned. Margaret, greatly in command, ordered a page to make the flames leap high. Grace returned, carrying the long parchment like a sleeping infant in her arms. ‘Throw it in,’ commanded the Countess.

Grace set the Act gently on the fire’s heart. It smouldered like feathers, then flamed, and the wax upon it ran like spreading veins of blood, blackening, corroding.

‘Now, my lady,’ said Margaret to Elizabeth. ‘By the grace of King Henry the Seventh you are restored. You are Elizabeth, rightful widow of Edward Plantagenet. Parliament has repealed this shameful Act.’

Elizabeth felt tears brimming, burning. She said very softly: ‘I would see Henry. I would kiss both his hands.’

‘When the time is full,’ said Margaret, closing her lips tight.

‘Does Bess not please him?’

‘The physicians have made their examination …’

O Jesu! thought Elizabeth suddenly, wildly aghast. She loved her uncle; he visited her at Sheriff Hutton. Richard has deflowered her, and all is lost. Her head and hand twitched madly, and Margaret looked away.

‘They find her strong and goodly proportioned,’ she continued. ‘She should conceive an heir with no trouble.’

Elizabeth snatched up the despised wine and gulped it down.

The Countess rose. ‘Farewell, your Grace,’ she said. Elizabeth looked at her with haggard, grateful eyes. Your Grace! That sweet, almost forgotten sound.

‘A word,’ said Margaret, at the door. ‘When you meet His Majesty; let me counsel you on his humour. He is grave and sober, as befits the saviour of England. He would gladly forget the shames that Edward brought on England. Therefore the Titulus Regius no longer exists, and it must never be mentioned. You understand?’

‘I do.’ Ah, let me kiss his feet!

Margaret drew her mantle about her. ‘Also,’ she said, leaving, ‘he dislikes frivolity. There has been overmuch light-mindedness in past royal households. Go gracefully in his presence, my dame. The King does not jest.’

So, good. I, too, dislike jesters.

Margaret turned outside the door and stepped into the little chariot that had been brought for her. Blazoned on its flank was the White Rose of York, with half its petals painted red, to signify the merging of the Houses. She was already seated when Grace broke from her place beside Elizabeth at the door and ran forward. She clutched at the gold tassels hanging from the side of the litter. The Countess turned to her a frigid face; it blurred and shivered in her sight.

‘Madame … Madame …’ Grace could scarcely speak. ‘Is there news … of my lord of Gloucester?’

‘Gloucester is dead,’ Margaret said, and laughed. ‘His Majesty bravely slew him in the field.’

She saw Grace’s cheeks turn to clay. Perhaps the jest was too strong. ‘You meant the traitor Richard, of course?’ she said curtly.

‘No,’ Grace whispered. ‘His son.’

‘Bah!’ cried the Countess. ‘The boy! Well, to my knowledge he is in London, kindly tended by the King’s mercy …’

She felt Grace’s lips, Grace’s tears upon her hand. Oddly uneasy, she leaned from the little chariot and called: ‘Drive on!’ Carriage and escort moved forward, in a storm of golden leaves and marguerites, and roses red and white.

The day was a luminous ghost. Snow blotted the roofs and towers of Westminster and shed broken paleness on courtyard and thoroughfare. Although the weather was warm for January the snow did not melt. Swiftly London’s filth vanished beneath the smooth white silence; footprints, carrion, offal, dung, all were masked and absolved by it. The city’s outline blurred. A lucent gloom necessitated the early lighting of torches. The Palace window, behind which Henry dressed for his wedding, flung out a glow mirroring another across the courtyard.

He wished to step to the window and look out curiously at that other light, where Bess underwent the careful ceremonies of preparation. He could hear the jingle of harness as the wedding guests rode into the yard below. He longed to throw open the window and suck in snowflakes, for the chamber was uncomfortably warm. However, this would necessitate treading on a dozen or so henchmen who crowded him, washing him, oiling and dressing him with deliberate formality. He therefore stationed Morton, already in full ecclesiastic regalia, at the window, and fired pleasant questions at him.

‘What do you see, my lord?’

The Bishop looked down at the splashed colours, the pennons and banners and quarterings dappled with snow. The yard glowed with the liveries of a hundred visiting knights. A menagerie of blazons filled the air; stags, bulls, wolves, bright birds; azure and gold and gules. Esquires were running to assist dismounting lords; grooms led sleek horses to shelter.

‘The Spanish Ambassador, Ayala,’ he said. ‘And the sub-Prior of Santa Cruz. About thirty in his suite.’

‘Spain,’ said Henry softly. ‘Good. Who goes to meet them?’

‘Bourchier,’ said Morton, peering. Directly below, the Cardinal Archbishop, looking like a scarlet mushroom, moved to receive the guests. Cardinal Archbishop! A pang of envy, swiftly quelled, shot through him. All will come to pass, he thought.

‘Here comes the French contingent,’ he said.

I trust we can feed them all, thought Henry. Were four thousand barrels of herring enough? They would surely suffice throughout Lent. The guests were bound to stay until Easter … The provision accounts were graven on his mind, He had checked them himself. He raised his arms so that two knights could clothe him in a shirt of Rennes cloth of the pale washed-leaf colour called applebloom. And ten thousand barrels of oysters?

‘My lord, we must talk again about taxes,’ he called, his voice muffled by the shirt over his head.

‘Gladly, Sire. But not on your wedding-day!’ laughed the Bishop.

Four esquires knelt to adjust the King’s hose, lacing the points delicately. Next came the velvet doublet, the colour of claret, and a long mantle one shade paler, faced with whey-coloured ermine soft as down. Henry lifted each foot in turn and was shod in supple red leather. The velvet was heavy; he began to sweat lightly and a page anointed his head with rose-water cologne. There were too many people in the chamber; for instance, de Gigli, the prebendary of St. Paul’s, one who fancied himself a poet, stood clutching the endless Latin epithalamium composed for the nuptials. Henry guessed correctly that it would be a flowery piece. It could wait. The servants brought a jewel-coffer; his hands hovered over collars and rings. They winked up at him like knowing eyes.

‘Majesty,’ said a small voice. Yet another poet, Bernard Andreas, had wormed his way to the edge of the circle of henchmen.

‘Will you not hear my anthem? ’Tis only short.’

Henry sighed and nodded.

The poet recited squeakily:

‘God save King Henry wheresoe’er he be,

And for Queen Elizabeth now pray we,

And for all her noble progeny;

God save the church of Christ from any folly,

And for Queen Elizabeth now pray we.’

A look of jealous fury passed from de Gigli to Andreas, who bowed, smirking. The King took a ruby from the box and placed it on his forefinger. Of course, the meaning in Andreas’s creation was quite plain; a subtle reminder that England expected Bess to be crowned as soon as possible after her wedding. Well, that too could wait. He picked out another ring, a tiny carved skull once belonging to Richard, looked at it and set it down again. Andreas will expect payment, he thought. But he shall have it, the anthem is correct enough and he seems loyal … savagely he bit his lip at this imbecility. A slip of the mind, in truth. Had he forgotten that none is loyal? Every smile cloaks a traitor; there’s no man in this room, this city, this realm, who would not betray me. And my own advantage is this certain truth. He bowed his bony shoulders and received the weight of a gold collar studded with emeralds. Behind him, vassals, like monkeys, plucked invisible fluff off his mantle.

In a corner Reynold Bray was praying for a blessing on the King’s marriage. Earlier the clerk had told Henry that the Stafford brothers, still in Sanctuary at Abingdon, were plotting revolt. Henry decided then that he would knight Bray soon. Not for loyalty! but for his tireless, ferreting energy. As for the Staffords – they would be dealt with in his own time. He would make an example of them so that every traitor might know himself under the King’s surveillance. One of the pages stood on tiptoe to crown Henry with a velvet cap. A rose, fashioned of red and silver tissue, was pinned to the cap with a jewel. Later, in the Abbey, Henry would wear his crown. They held the steel mirror before him. For a second he thought: that man is pale! not recognizing himself. Then strength flowed into him. The past, with its doubts, died. He thought: I am as glorious as Edward or Richard ever was. More glorious!

And I am careful. I am not prodigal with doubts, money, or my life. All the anthems in the world shall not do justice to the wisdom of Cadwallader’s seed! Free now to join Morton at the window, he looked down on the surging panoply, seeing among the standards the silver crescent of Northumberland, who had so nearly betrayed him in the field, coming so tardily to espouse his cause. Reminded by the standard that he had other territories besides London, Henry said: ‘I shall ride north after Lent.’

‘Is that wise, Sire?’ Morton. ‘York in particular is still in a ferment of grief over Richard’s death.’

Henry looked mildly surprised. ‘It must be done. The Yeomen of the Guard will escort me, and a few hundred outriders. Of course we shall go. I will claim my allegiance throughout the realm.’

He looked again at the pale window opposite.

‘Is my bride ready?’ he mused. ‘Who attends her?’

Across that gap of snow-driven air, Bess stood like stone. What seemed a million miles below, wenches crawled fussing with the hem of her gown. Behind her she heard the whispering of her sister Cicely and her aunt Catherine, adjusting her train, a billow of cloth-of-gold. The most prominent of the attendants was Margaret Beaufort, who flitted here and there, advising, admonishing, like an officious gnome. Bess thought: I am a doll, a mammet, being readied for some children’s revel. I am no longer Elizabeth of York, for when I donned this shining gown, I relinquished myself. I could no more leave this place than a doll could run from a child’s destructive hands. So be it; I will be a doll, inert. So many lectures had been hammered in her ears by Morton, the Countess, and by her constant companion, Maud Herbert, that the advice had mingled in her mind and run away, like rain down a conduit. Be dutiful, Bess. Be obedient. Do not laugh or weep loudly. Above all, be fruitful! Poor Bess, with a wit that astounded even herself, had countered: ‘I will be fruitful, if I have a good gardener!’

She felt Grace undo her hair so that it fell almost to her knees, a veil of shining primrose. Poor Grace! she thought absently. So willing and quiet, with her odd little pointed face and those eyes whose colour came as a shock every time they looked at you. Even Grace was changed these days; the hands wielded the comb as efficiently as ever, but her face was indrawn, bleak with some awful distress.

Elizabeth, sitting quietly in the window-embrasure, watched her daughter apparelled. The comb passed through Bess’s hair as through water. Maud Herbert took a long strand of sapphires and diamonds and wound it about Bess’s head. She pulled it tight, tormentingly tight; it bit into Bess’s brow and the nape of her neck. The tension of the past hours overwhelmed Bess; she burst into tears. Instantly Mistress Herbert was contrite, caressing the Princess, whispering unspeakable comforts in her ear.

‘Your Grace, don’t cry. Marriage is given by God; as to the … fleshy business – his Majesty will not hurt you!’

Bess spoke, for the first time. ‘How should you know?’ and turned away, stiff and regal. Maud sniggered and withdrew. ‘Let me help,’ said Grace gently; arranging the jewelled circlet more comfortably, she was very close to Bess.

‘Have you seen John? John of Gloucester?’ she whispered.

‘He came with me from Sheriff Hutton. They say that Henry has shut him in the Tower, together with my cousin of Warwick; but I don’t know … I don’t think so.’

‘Was he well?’

‘Yes … no, he was not …’ said Bess. Grace sucked in a harsh breath; next moment the Countess of Richmond descended upon them.

‘Are we ready?’ she demanded. ‘Bess, I vow you are most comely. Dear daughter! je t’embrasse, je te bénisse …’ She pecked the girl’s cheek. Bess’s eyes flicked round the circle of attendant ladies. Fatigue and excitement whitened their faces; the palest was that of her mother, advancing towards her. Elizabeth placed her arms, their flesh fiery, about Bess. The feel of that frail, seething heat was unnerving. ‘Madame, are you sick?’ she whispered.

‘What? On this, our day of days?’ said Elizabeth. She held Bess close, kissed her, clung.

‘Madame, you will crease my dress.’

‘This day,’ said Elizabeth almost drunkenly, ‘we shall be one family again. Reunited. My dear son Tom, my brothers Edward and Lionel. Your sisters, Cicely here – Kate, Mary, Bridget, for the nuns of Dartford have given her leave. And my little sons whom I have not seen for so long. My Ned, my Richard …’

She pressed her hot face against Bess’s icy gemmed temple. The firm hand of Margaret Beaufort detached them.

‘It’s time.’ She flung open the chamber door. Outside, the snow fell no longer and a pale red sun had appeared. The Yeomen of the Guard were manipulating a golden canopy whereunder Bess might walk. Distant trumpets sounded, and further away, the rhythm of steel on anvil, for men were preparing for the three days’ jousting that would follow the wedding. There was the smell of woodsmoke and rubbish burning; it would soon be dusk and the citizens had lighted the first of many bonfires. There would be revelry in the streets; the King had sent messengers abroad, bidding merriment.

The procession gathered. Bishops and Archbishops, monks and priests and poets; statesmen and nobles, barons and dukes and earls. The bridal party, a shimmering train of rich dress and soaring standards, swayed and converged; as they passed under the gate the entourage of York and Lancaster merged in splendour, the white rose and red blossoming athwart one another. Clarions called harshly. There was no question of who should escort the bride. Elizabeth was almost jostled back by the King’s mother, and took her place only a few steps before Grace and Catherine. She bade herself have patience. This was the dreamed-of day; Bess will be Queen of England in an hour, and I Queen-Dowager. The past is gone. Deo Gratias …’

‘Deo Gratias!’ The choir strained to the topmost stave, their voice sharp-edged like the silvery vaulting of the Abbey; the singing softened in a dying fall, then rose like the fanned sweep of pillars that dwarfed the congregation. Light, stark yet shadowed, fell upon the couple as they knelt for the final prayer. The choir shrilled to a height again and died, to find breath for the last anthem. Candlelight gleamed upon the wedding-rings. Acolytes raised the great Cross from which fiery prisms smoked down on the bent heads of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth Plantagenet. The Cardinal had officiated at many weddings before, royal weddings, yet he thought: never was there a stranger marriage, for the King’s hands had shaken uncontrollably during the exchange of rings, and the maiden was as stiff and waxen as the Virgin in her nearby niche. Faintly there had come sobbing from the nave, from someone unknown, unseen.

Elizabeth’s tired eyes ranged over the packed throng. She looked up towards the altar, at the russet hair of Henry under the rich new crown, and at Bess’s flaxen fall. Her gaze wandered: stall upon stall was filled, with Tudors, with the old scions of Lancaster, a few of the House of York (Bess’s unfortunately and costly blood) – Lincoln and his satellites, Margaret of Salisbury. Again her eyes roved, past shadowed alcoves and through chantrys with their shining leaves of stone, past the dark-blue, the silver and gold, the red of banners, the rose and the dragon; into hollowed darknesses and frailly-lit corners her eyes probed and questioned. They sought answer in the painted face of long-dead knights, the gilded saints, the smoke-grey images, reminders of love and death now cast in clay. Grace was kneeling close behind her. She turned her head and asked:

‘Do you see anyone?’

‘Who, highness?’

‘My sons – Ned and Richard. They must be here.’

She turned fully and saw how Grace’s eyes also roved, as they had done throughout the ceremony; they moved about the nave, they strained, with blood-flecks showing, to the chancel and up to the clerestory.

‘I see no one, Madame.’

I see no one. I do not see my love. My love, are you imprisoned? If not, why did they forbid you this royal charade?

‘I would have thought my sons would be present.’

‘Why is John of Gloucester not here?’

They looked at one another as the choir, mad with the wine of heaven, reached an unwavering, heartstopping height and hung upon it. Elizabeth’s dull, wasted hand was drooping at her side. Grace’s fingers stole out and closed about it. So they remained, as the couple came slowly down towards them, the trumpets sounding for their going out. In the streets, red flame caught the first bonfire, and the cheers of festive London arose.

Leaving the Abbey, Elizabeth slipped on a patch of soft snow. Grace flung out her arms, catching the Queen-Dowager’s weight upon her own hip and shoulder. For a moment the two women clung together, while the crowd, yeomen and vassals and merchants, all muffled in their best, watched curiously, but only for a moment; they were avid to drink in the bride. In the dying red rays of the sun, Bess gleamed; her dress, her jewels, her sleek, lambent cheeks. She is like the Queen of Heaven, the watchers murmured, genuinely awed. Henry walked steadily beneath the canopy beside his bride; he was stern and gorgeous. Enthusiasm wafted through the mob; someone took up the cry – God save King Henry! He smiled then; the long lips curved in the calm face, the yellowish eyes sparkled acknowledgment.

‘Is all well, Madame?’ Grace whispered. Elizabeth held on to her arm.

‘Yes. You are good. Grace, you are good to me.’

It was the kindest thing she had ever said to her. Grace seized the hand, the limp wasted hand, and kissed it. Together they moved on to the banquet in Westminster Hall. The King’s Yeomen held open the great door, gathering in nobles; finally the door was closed upon the gaping crowd. One last cheer arose, before peasant and pedlar, trollop and friar and prentice turned to one another with shining eyes. A band of fiddlers struck up and a man beat on a drum. The long night was beginning.

‘You must bear me sons, Bess.’

Seriously he said it, as if on the moment she could fulfil his command. He stood at the foot of the bed. Propped on pillows, she watched his slender nervousness and the way he twined his hands together. She wondered why he did not come to lie beside her. Twice and thrice he had opened the chamber door to ensure that the Yeoman were vigilant. She could hear the barked orders as they changed duty, and the clash of pikes in salute. She lay, a doll, in a white embroidered high-necked shift and with the long-wheaten sheaf of her hair spread over the coverlet and flung out on the pillows. She was weary past weariness. The banquet had been long and sickly; the toasts had drummed in her dizzy ears. Lancaster! Cadwallader! Tudor! Tudor for ever! Bleakly and vaguely she wondered what her father would have made of it all, then ceased to wonder.

‘Bess?’ he said again.

‘Sire, I will obey to my best endeavour.’

Secretly she thought there must be more to getting children than talking about it. Henry approached and sat on the bed. Blue hollows lay beneath his eyes. There was something he was trying to say, but neither of them knew what it was.

‘Did the revel please you?’ he said. She nodded.

‘I liked the woman who sang with the fiddle,’ he continued. (A Welshwoman, with a voice like an icicle to make the blood race like a mountain beck. Two shillings, and cheap at the price.)

‘Sire …’

‘For God’s love – I am Henry in this chamber.’

She smiled, looked down and began to plait the tassels on the sheet.

‘What is it?’ he said gently. He began to think she was a simpleton; that was not to her detriment, as long as she bore him strong, clever sons.

‘My mother said …’

The mother; that thin bright desperate face, seen only in a brief moment of greeting before the dais. Well, she had played her part. He would use her kindly, if she gave him no cause to do otherwise. Trust none. The talisman burned his brain. Trust no man, or woman. The face, a dying spark, wavered before him and was still.

‘She craved an audience with you,’ said Bess’s little, dutiful voice. ‘She has endeavoured to see you for weeks. Tonight … Henry, she was disappointed.’

It was the last thing Elizabeth had said to her, before they were parted by a score of priests for the bedding ceremony. It would be wrong not to deliver the message.

‘Henry?’

He was not listening. There had been a man who ate live coals, and cost six shillings and eight pence. And a little maid who danced – twelve shillings for her. Rather costly; but the Spaniards, full-fed, well-wined, with bulging eyes, had applauded. They would carry back tales of Henry’s court, to make a mark with their Isabella. Tomorrow, he thought, I must draw in my horns. The progress north must not be too expensive. I must consult with Morton about taxes.

‘… only wishes to thank you. Will you see her?’

‘Your mother?’ he repeated slowly, returning from his mental account-book. He drew back the covers and hoisted himself into bed. He picked up a shining strand of Bess’s hair. It was as healthy and pristine as an ear of wheat, and clung to his fingers.

‘What manner of woman is she?’ he asked. He had his own thoughts on this, but was none the less open to instruction.

‘I don’t know. She is …’

‘Proud?’ A nod. Of course. Had he not assessed her pride at their very first meeting? ‘Strong?’ Bess did not answer.

‘Not so strong, these days,’ he spoke almost to himself. He had guessed she was ill. With characteristic, uncanny intuition, he gave her five years more at best.

‘Strong in spirit,’ said Bess.

‘Ah!’ He lifted the tress of hair and set his lips to it. It smelled of gillyflowers, distilled in fatigue and fear.

‘She snared that old ram, your father!’ he said brutally, and was instantly shocked at himself. One should not speak so … or was anything permissible these days? In Edward’s court, free speech, free doings, had been legion. Curiously he said: ‘How was it done?’ then, ‘Blessed Christ! How should you know?’ He laughed and slid an arm about Bess’s shoulders.

‘She was most beautiful.’ It was only a whisper.

‘There must have been more than that! Beautiful women were conquered and left by Edward yearly. What more, Bess?’

‘He desired her,’ said Bess, blushing, and dived under the clothes like a seal.

‘What more?’ persisted Henry. ‘Ah, does it matter?’ sliding down under the mounded damask. ‘Come, Bess. Let us see if you have inherited your father’s lust!’

Shortly enraptured, the cool part of his mind remained to say: There is no witchery here, and so the witch can wait…

The bonfire outside Westminster Hall had melted the snow. The ground was ruddy, fluidly shadowed as the reflected flames leaped and ran between the tossing crowd of dancers. A hundred people capered with linked hands; men and women lifted snow-damp feet and skirts to the squeal of the fiddles and the rabid beating of the drum. Over a lesser fire the hacked remains of two oxen swung on a spit. A gang of prentices were playing football with an empty canikin. Although some folk were already drifting back to their homes, the noise was still ferocious. It was a wild gaiety; something of blood-sacrifice lay in its note. The joy was desperate, like the last dance before a judgment. The din drifted up the palace walls, drowned the office of the Sanctuary monks, and leaped across the icy river in which, reflected from the further bank, answering fires were seen.

A bevy of ancient men occupied a bench and ruminated over the cups. Wool-muffled lovers played tag and fiercer, hotter games in and out of the shadows. Pickpurses made their own festival among the careless crowd. A whippet, flying in pursuit of a rat, upset a friar into a drift of ale-sodden snow; the prentices left their game to gape at the Church struggling in sodden habit. Above this scene, lights were going out all over the Palace.

The Yeomen of the Guard were allowed no drink, so austere was their destiny, the avid protection of the King’s person. However, the gate-ward had had their smuggled fill. If they were careless, it was most ardently concealed. Their backs were as straight as ever; their iron grasp unwavering on their pikes. Yet some joined, under their breath, with the crowd’s song, and swayed a very little to the singings.

Rutterkin is come unto our town,

In a cloak without coat or gown,

Save ragged hood to cover his crown,

Like a rutterkin, hoyda, hoyda!

It was an innocent-sounding lay, but it made them wink at one another. Mostly they were young men; when Grace, heavily swathed in a wool houpeland, and hand in hand with Renée, sought to pass through into the street, they knew nothing but pleasure. They chaffed the two women, throwing gaudy compliments. One of the guard put his arm about Grace, mock-sternly demanding her business. She looked up and recognized him: Master Walter, who had rescued her from the urchins outside Westminster Hall, who had taken her to Baynard’s Castle, to the warm alien caress of Anne Neville. She noticed he still wore a white rose; it was pinned half-under the facings of his tunic. He remembered her too, after a moment, and with rough tenderness, asked her how she was.

‘And you’re not going out? Into this?’ He gestured towards the revelry.

‘Parbleu! Why not?’ exploded Renée, who had dined well and was in a fierce good-humour. ‘We have leave …’

‘The King’s leave? The Queen’s?’ he said. Then, more softly. ‘God bless her. Sweet Bess!’

‘The Queen-Dowager’s leave,’ said Renée stiffly. ‘I heard that my cousins are come from France. I would find them, and you shall not stop me. Master White Rose!’

‘Red and White, mistress!’ He showed her the other lapel, on which stiff scarlet petals bloomed. He bowed, and let the women pass through. Grace glanced back once; there was something bleak about him, as if part of him had died.

They descended the steps and crossed the square into the leaping firelight. The people surged like insects, all buzzing song, curses and laughter. As the throng enfolded her she felt stifled. She smelled choking woodsmoke, sour ale, vomit, the void of bladders. She thought of the sweating sicknes and was afraid. A prentice still chasing his canikin dived against her, separating her from Renée. Grace’s hood was snatched back by the jostle; her loose bright hair took gold light, red shadows from the fire. The flames sought out the pale pointed face and the green eyes wide with alarm. She felt the buffetings of the people; despite this they seemed like mirages, as if her oustretched hand could pass clean through them. Across her vision passed the figure of the tall Moor, the man with the monkey whom she had seen the day when Walter aided her. He seemed ominous; a figure of fate. Out loud she said the old raison of reassurance.

‘I am the daughter of a King!’

‘Why, here’s sport!’

There were four of them, they crowded her, their hot bodies pressing. They were young, their doublets smeared with fat from the wedding roast, their faces flushed with ale. Well met, sweetheart, they said, admiring her, a flower on a dunghill. She shook off a clasp on her arm, twisted from an embrace, felt fingers tickling her neck. There was a red haired girl with them, a pretty girl with a dirty face and a torn bodice half-revealing pearly breasts. She laughed scornfully as one of the youths succeeded in kissing Grace. His wet mouth, burning with ale, engulfed her mouth, nose, cheeks. She dragged her face away, and cried out. Renée turned and blundered back through the mob. With a savage hipswing she knocked the red haired girl aside, and tore Grace from the circle of arms. Her hands boxed, leaving red ears, and she let out a long string of complicated French oaths. A few were directed at Grace herself.

‘Could you not keep beside me?’ she grumbled as they fled. Damn you, Renée, Grace thought; it was only a favour that brought me with you on this social errand. I would rather have stayed with my lady, sleeping peacefully when last seen, with Catherine at the bed-foot. Sleeping like a child, Christ be praised.

The cousins were discovered drinking wine outside a tavern on the farther side of the square. Renée launched herself at them with tears and kisses and endless questions. They had come from Harfleur with the Tudor guests. Grace found them intimidating, especially Alicia de Serrencourt, who viewed the spectacle of London at play with derision.

‘Alors! Regardez les anglais en fête!’ Her fishy eyes spoke of barbarians. Her husband, who never had the chance to speak, brought Grace a cup of wine, and leaned gloomily against the door-frame of the bustling tavern. The women gabbled – French endearments, congratulation, speculation. Did the King like his bride? What a day for France, and England … Spain too was coming around. Although the reconciliation was begun in Richard’s day… ah, vraiment. The traitor Plantagenet, gone to his master, Lucifer. Grace clasped her brimming goblet, looked disinterestedly around. The fire was burning down, and even the prentices were wearying of their play. One or two young men, heads throbbing with excess, stood apart, dazedly wondering what had passed during the last few hours. One in particular stood rigidly, his hand resting upon a buttressed wall, as if he sought security in its age and firmness. The dying flames lit up his face.

She dropped the wine-cup and its contents splashed her with a deep red spray. She stared as if her eyes would burst, eyes already filling with tears of joy. She took a step forward and nearly fell. Was he real, or only another fleshly mirage, like the gay, strangely deathly crowd? Two people passed between her and the shadowed sight of him; a vagabond dragging spoils in a sack. Someone threw a broken cartwheel on the fire, and it blazed up anew. She saw him then, truly. He was John, unmistakable, alive, adored.

It took a minute to cross the square; it took an hour, an aeon. A spark from the fire caught her gown as she passed, and someone slapped at it, while she walked on, unheeding. The cobbles were warm under her feet. She walked to him through Hell, she came to him through an inferno of delight. Her whole body grew molten with love; her eyes were washed with joy. ‘Mistress, take care, you’re on fire!’ Minutes later the words came back. Yes. I burn. John, I burn. I never knew until this night, how I do burn. Welldoers pressed about her, dousing her smouldering clothes with the dregs of ale, and unthinkingly she struck off their aid. Hair streaming loose, eyes a green mist of love, she reached his side at last. He turned, and she saw in him a devil.

He was John, yet he was not John. He was made old and terrible and sad, by something manifest in his bitter eyes, in the cruel rancour of his mouth. She fell back as if thrust from him. He had lost much flesh; that was apparent from the cheeks sharp as blades, the harsh clean line of his jaw. But he was still elegant; his shoulders were broad and straight, his hair fell sleekly. It was a forced elegance that shrieked defiance and hatred. Hatred poured from him; an idiot could have sensed it. He smiled at her, a smile so awful that she glanced hastily behind to see who it was incurred his loathing, for she could not believe the look was directed at her. Even while seeing no one there she still did not believe, and she spoke his name in love and joy, while the tears in her eyes loosed themselves and poured.

If he had once borne resemblance to King Richard he was now Richard in facsimile, Richard most troubled, with a ghastly indrawn pallor as if he had been tortured and then starved. The fire shone eerily on the tight planes of cheeks and lit up the malevolence in his eyes. He looked her over steadily, keeping his palm pressed so hard against the wall that his whole arm trembled convulsively. She said, greatly pleading:

‘John, my love. John, what ails you?’

Still he looked at her, and presently said in a strong, controlled voice:

‘My father is dead,’ while tears darkened his eyes and fell smoothly down his face, which was like that of an unknowing sleepwalker who dreams and weeps.

She said, as she had always planned: ‘Ah, heart’s joy, I know it … be comforted,’ and took a step towards him, recoiling at sight of the hand held out against her like a drawn sword.

‘Stay from me,’ he whispered. ‘Do not touch or goad me. Christ help me, I am no more master of myself!’

‘For God’s love, John!’ she said, her voice shaking.

‘Go back,’ he said. Tears ran down his set face and over his chin. ‘Go to your mistress. To the witch, the Woodville, the serpent, the murderess. To the breaker of lives, to the ruiner of dynasties, the shame of thrones. To the poisoner, the widow maker, to Our Lady of Sin. Go to her, Mistress Grace, and kiss her and fawn upon her, and stroke her brow. Succour her so that she may have strength to work fresh evil … to rob fair knights, fine men, of hope and peace and bring them down to death …’

‘Ah, what are you saying?’

‘She killed him.’ His voice and rigid face were thick with tears. ‘As surely as if she had taken the sword and struck him down. She forecast and ensured his death. And worse than death! Oh, Jesus, God!’ He wailed so wildly and suddenly that folk turned to stare. ‘Would that for one hour she were a man! They could burn me, hang me, but give me chance to shear that Gorgon’s head!’

‘For God’s love, stop!’ she begged. Still he raved, he sobbed.

‘You do not know what was done to him!’ He beat his head against the stone buttress, drawing blood from his brow.

‘It is not my fault.’ Timidly she stretched out her hand and with a violent movement he struck it away, hurting her. She said, more wildly: ‘Why?’

‘Today I watched you. I stood outside Westminster while the devil’s spawn married my wretched cousin, Bess. I saw you come out with Woodville, and clasp her in your arms, and lip her hand. She who made my father’s flesh bloody filth and his name a pestilence upon the earth. She who comes higher in your heart than any other … you lie nightly with her … plotting … ruin, treachery …’ Choking, he bowed his head.

‘I plot with none.’ Her body was ice-cold

He spun away from the wall and she shrank. He raised his hands but dropped them quickly before they touched her.

‘You love her,’ he said, venomously soft. ‘Deny it!’

‘I do not deny it. Neither do I deny that I love you, John. Always, now and ever.’

‘Love me!’ His face came close. His breath was rank, his wet eyes stared. ‘Madame–’ with loathing emphasis – ‘God curse the day I ever knew you. May He burn me for a fool that I ever gave you my heart. In my folly I overlooked your treason, your false allegiance. To think that I ever held you dear!’

She looked down at her feet. All around was filth; chewed gristle from the roast, sodden straw, black snow-slush. Rags and debris and madness. A cur nosed for scraps, while a ragged infant pushed at it for possession of a bone. Her mind shut itself off, rejected the senseless rage that beat about her. This was not John; he was of the swans and the sun and flowers. Very far away she heard her own voice saying: ‘I love you, my lord,’ and his loud, heedless answer.

‘Why don’t you drink, lady? It is the brave Dragon’s wedding-day! Drink! Hey, tapster, wine here! Wine for a Woodville-lover!’

He cried this so loudly that across the square the tavern keeper heard him, and flapped his hands in a shop-shutting gesture.

John whirled and cried again: ‘Is there no wine? Oh, Jesu, I will give them wine like blood …’

The prentices’ red-haired slut came out of the shadows. She had been an avid if half-comprehending witness and was much amused. She held a half-full tankard.

‘Will ale do, sir?’

He saw her and she was translated; with her torn gown and soot-streaked white bosom, she was a sharpened sword, an angel of revenge. Ignorant of his purpose, she had been eyeing him for minutes, his fine clothes, his dark anger, even his tears.

‘Drink, sir?’ She raised the mug towards him. Untroubled by his fierce eyes she sank back into the buttressed alcove, where the leafy stones leaned down. She smoothed her skirts and measured him, look for look. Grace, watching, began to tremble afresh.

‘Is there more of this?’ His tone was surprisingly calm.

‘Plenty, highness.’

He took the cup, raised it, a sacrament. ‘Death to Henry!’ He swallowed, his throat moving fast and painfully until the draught was done. Grace caught a look of triumph from under swathed red hair, as John said to the girl: ‘Are you for Lancaster, maiden, or for York?’ pitifully casual, and the grimy white shoulders rose and fell. ‘Tis all the same.’ The victor, her eyes moved to Grace. ‘So long as I’ve food in my belly, and a man to pleasure me …’tis all the same.’

‘Your name?’

‘No name, sir, ’tis best.’ She threw back her head, laughed with surprisingly fair white teeth. ‘Does it matter?’

‘I’ll baptize you,’ he said. The marks of tears lay on his gaunt, frenzied face. He sprinkled ale-dregs over the girl’s skin. ‘Let us call you Elizabeth! Elizabeth, my queen!’

‘That is the Queen’s name …’ she said in wonder. John began to laugh, and moved forward to clasp her in his arms, in front of Grace’s anguish. ‘Go!’ he called to her over the ragged shoulder. ‘Go to your first and best love! Go! Witch!’

Yet he watched her return across the square which she had traversed in such love. He shuddered from the devils in him, heard the woman crooning in his ear, and wished for death.

Grace looked back once. Her sight was almost gone, but she fancied that he either wept or laughed. The red-haired girl was holding him so close, she could not be sure.

‘Where, my lord?’

‘How should I know?’

Tom Dorset was irritable. The new court was not as he had fancied it to be and lacked something, making him uneasy. He was the Queen-Dowager’s son, the Queen’s halfbrother, and yet … He hardly ever saw the King. Henry was inaccessible, as different from Edward and Richard as lord from vassal. Dorset had rank, but he was perplexed. He had not enjoyed his sojourn at the foreign court. There, he had fled after the business with Jane and Hastings, and there he had found himself enmeshed. When he had tried to obey his mother’s summons home, he had been waylaid; Tudor’s men had come upon him at the moment when he was about to board ship for England; they had haled him back to French Charles, from whose side he had been forbidden to stir, save for occasional close-guarded rides. He had not forgotten. He looked down at Grace. He admired her, but she was becoming a nuisance; he had more on his mind than the whereabouts of lost lovers.

‘Ask my mother!’ he said.

‘She does not know.’

Grace was weeping again. She had wept so much during the past week that her vision was affected; objects were fluid or owned misty, hurting edges. She had collided with Dorset coming round a corner in a deserted part of the Palace of Westminster.

‘Why do you wish to know?’ he said curiously. ‘The sons of dead kings are of no value. Grace …’ he admonished her: ‘live for the day. Serve King Henry.’

‘Do you, my lord?’ She raised her swollen eyes.

‘Of course,’ he answered swiftly.

‘Is John here, somewhere in Westminster?’ she said softly. ‘Where does he live? You know most things. Everyone says so.’

‘Indeed.’ He was momentarily flattered. ‘Well, lady, not this. I tell you … ask father Stanley.’

‘Father Stanley?’

‘Bess calls him so.’

‘Bess does not know where John is?’

‘Don’t worry her for the love of God,’ Dorset said hurriedly. ‘She is to be left in peace, at the King’s wish. You will have us all in mischief. Dear Grace,’ he said quite kindly. ‘Forget this knave. Find yourself another.’

‘I cannot,’ she said quietly. ‘He is my joy and comfort, my heart’s maker.’

Had the red-haired girl stripped him of sorrow? Filled him with drink? Yielded her soft, soiled passion to his desire? Cousin, don’t cry, Dorset was saying. Cousin? He is not my cousin – John is my most beloved cousin. Bess, whom I may not approach, my half-sister. Richard, whom they slew, was my uncle, and his brother, who died in ardent fullness, my father. Young Warwick, immured in the Tower, is my cousin too. Anne Neville was my aunt, and she lies deep under leaf-edged stone. Elizabeth is none of my blood, and according to John, is devil and witch, and I love her. Vainly she sought the riddle’s answers and sanity in the crazed pattern, in Dorset’s dismissive face. The answer did not lie in the hard coolness of the ruby on her hand, John’s ring, still hopelessly worn. Nor in the nerveless tear-hung air, nor in the silvery sweep of fanned corridor where she and Dorset stood. Nor in the corridor’s successive arches, each like a hungry mouth. Arch upon arch yawned into the distance, ending in the blackest mouth of all, to which, impatient, Dorset pointed.

‘Ask to see father Stanley,’ he repeated. ‘At this hour you will find him in his chambers.’

He bowed and went on his way. Grace started slowly through the chasmic arches. As she walked, a sob burst from her and was caught up in the folds of the impassive stone; it echoed above her head, died and was lost. She wondered: will it return? Will my grief resound in this place after I am dead? It was a sudden, weird thought that amazed her, that dried her tears. She spoke with Stanley’s personal esquires outside his apartments, and was admitted rather too soon catching the trail of a dire argument between husband and wife. Stanley’s voice, usually mellow with diplomacy, was raised.

‘Dame, I tell you I mislike it! It will alienate her.’

Margaret Beaufort’s clipped tones were high.

‘My lord, she is of no import, no more than a puff of wind. I for one am pleased with the Act of Settlement. Should Bess die, my son is free to suit himself. He can take a Spanish princess … why should he be bound to Woodville daughters? There is precedent, but precedent is born to be broken …’

‘Margaret, Margaret.’ Stanley groaned, and hid his head. He was seated at a table, while his wife worked her tapestry, driving the needle viciously. She looked up and saw Grace.

‘Why, welcome, child!’ Grace took a step into the room, thinking instantly: why do they call me child? I am a woman, tormented, wise. What passes now between John and me is no children’s game. I must not weep before the Countess.

‘You come from the Queen-Dowager?’ said Margaret.

‘I come from myself.’

The steady black eyes held Grace’s own. ‘Are you well?’ said the Countess. ‘Do you pray daily? Remember the King in your prayers, for my sake.’

‘I pray. Daily.’

‘Ask for his safety,’ said Margaret. ‘He is gone to York, where the people are savages. Pray for his long life and constant welfare.’

‘I do.’ In secret, she touched the hard cold ruby on her hand. Margaret rose and, smiling, ushered her further into the room. The walls were hung with fresh gold banners. One of them depicted a fat hawthorn bush crowned, a reminder of Bosworth Field. ‘Cleave to the Crown though it hang on a bush’ ran the raison, stitched in claret thread.

Stanley smiled at Grace. He looked pale; there was the same vague distrait air about him that Dorset wore. His brow creased as he fumbled to place her, and eventually succeeded. Again, Grace was struck by her own unimportance. If I died, she thought, few would notice. They might say: where is that litle maid – Edward’s girl? What girl? How did she look, whom did she serve? They would shrug or feign remembrance for politeness’ sake. Again, Grace thought, curtseying before Lord Stanley: How shall any of us be remembered?

By our looks, our actions, our allegiances, our prayers? By none of these. If poets, perhaps by the dusty writings that remain. By power? Certainly, and by the mark that power made upon us and those who follow us. So that I, who have no power, shall be one of the lost legions. One who struggled and wept and laughed briefly, who loved flowers and beauty, and one man, and one woman. Of less event than a dusky moth, born to dance and die in a night.

The mystic flame touched her mind, clarifying past, present, and future, so that Stanley and his Countess were no longer grown and solid and invincible, but mere children, ghosts, their life-span already done together with that of all others in the world who deluded themselves with thoughts of immortality. This left the taste of urgency; best to speak now.

She stepped up to Stanley’s table and said firmly:

‘You, my lord, have the control of the Household. I beg knowledge in which apartment John of Gloucester lies. I know he is supported by the King …’

To conceal his sudden interest, Stanley busied himself with some documents. Anything, Thomas, the King had said. Any clue to Plantagenet uprising, any hint that might lead to those Stafford rebels, out of Sanctuary now and likely to raise a force. And Stanley had acquiesced like lightning, driven by an unnamed anxiety to serve. Now here was a Woodville partisan seeking one of the last sprigs of the yellow broom. A strange brewing. Was it worth watching ferment?

‘His most gracious Majesty treats the young man kindly,’ he said. ‘Why would you find him?’

‘He has something of mine. It is of value, and I would know it is in safekeeping.’

And not a lie in the whole speech. What else, but my heart? It would be unwise to declare this, however, with holy Margaret only waiting to denounce the flesh.

‘So.’ Stanley smoothed the curling parchments under his hand. ‘Yes. I may tell you. Gloucester is not at court. The King has found him lodgings in the City.’ He lifted his hand, and the rolls shot into a cylinder again.

‘Where, my lord?’ Oh, Jesu! let him not leave it there, so vaguely, in London’s teeming maw. Stanley looked once at his wife. She gave a quick moorhen’s nod and started again on her sewing.

‘Do you know Chepeside? Of course you do,’ he said. ‘The young man lives with a master butcher, William Gould. Not with him, at least, but over his shop. You could send a letter. If you go in person, take one of my men; it is more fitting.’

‘I will go alone,’ said Grace. The thought of Stanley’s henchman witnessing her fresh shames was appalling.

He shrugged. ‘As you will. I trust,’ with a pallid smile, ‘that you recover your property.’

Grace went and kissed his spotted ageing claw. She curtseyed and withdrew under a last smile from Margaret.

‘Pay my respects to the Queen-Dowager,’ said the Countess.

The door closed behind Grace. Instantly Stanley got up. From an ante-chamber entered Reynold Bray.

‘You heard?’ said Stanley. ‘It may be naught, but all the same …’

There was one more errand, before she could leave. The need to look upon Elizabeth. This sent her the length of the Palace, crossing broad ways where new arras hung, and dipping her skirts down twisted staircases. Treading cold stones, fresh rushes, she passed scurrying servants and twice saw the Yeomen of the Guard. They spoke Breton or Welsh, an almost identical tongue, and looked as if they never smiled. The Tudor court grew and flourished all about, with an austere and alien richness. Although the court was depleted and Henry absent, his presence lingered, cool and meditative and strong.

Catherine Woodville opened the door of the familiar apartment. She was flushed, and held a letter.

‘I’m to marry again,’ she announced before Grace could speak. ‘I am to marry the King’s uncle, the Earl of Pembroke.’

‘Jasper Tudor,’ said Grace softly. ‘He’s an old man.’

Catherine’s fair face reddened. ‘Better old than none!’ Scornfully she looked Grace over.

Elizabeth was seated by the window, still, save for the occasional restless flutter of her ruined left hand. Her head was lifted as she gazed through the high panes, and the light fell on the perfect line of her throat. Grace knelt beside her. Absently, as on every day, the hand reached out, and Grace began to rub, to knead and massage the dead-cold flesh, curving her own hands round the flaccid fingers. During this ritual the Queen-Dowager continued to stare up and outwards.

‘The King has ridden north.’

‘I know, highness.’

‘He did not call me to say farewell. I was sorry. May the saints preserve him from all enemies.’

After a long silence she went on, as if musing. ‘Yesterday he took back my estates – those I have left – for the Crown.’ Grace looked up sharply. Elizabeth was smiling. ‘He is to pay me in lieu; I would have it so. I am not so enamoured of travelling, these days.’ She looked down, her blue eyes pale, far-off. ‘He is to pay me in full.’

Grace went on manipulating the slack fingers.

‘We can still go to Greenwich, although it is no longer in my name. We can have clothes, make merry. The King, my saviour, will make me rich.’

It was odd to hear calmness in place of raving; this extremity of peace, as if striving were over and done.

‘I shall see him when he returns from his progress,’ said Elizabeth. ‘He will give me privy audience; I have waited a long time.’

‘Madame,’ said Grace, during another silence. ‘I would beg your indulgence.’

The frail shining cheek inclined towards her. ‘You ask leave to go out?’ Grace bowed, still stroking and moulding the dead hand. Was there a little warmth, returning? ‘You guessed, Madame.’

‘You’re easy to read; said Elizabeth. ‘Take your congé, then. But …’

‘My lady?’

‘Return to me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Be sure that you come back.’ Grace’s burning brow touched the Queen-Dowager’s slender wrists.

‘I pledge it.’ Then she rose and quit the chamber without a backward look. Yet she felt the eyes upon her, in an unknown, unspeakable plea.

The riverboat journey was easy. Wrapped and hooded in wool she sat in the stern, near to three merchants and their wives and an ancient clerk, whose tonsured skull, thin and veined as a baby’s, grew pimples in the stiff breeze. She disembarked with the others near Baynard’s, and because the merchants seemed bound for the City she followed unobtrusively a little way behind until the streets narrowed and she was sucked into London’s dense, overhung heart. The merchants quickened their pace and turned eastwards up Knightrider Street, and she lost them. She stood looking at the roads and alleys going away from the square, and ahead to where Paul’s spire pointed at the sun. The day was cold, with an early spring coldness. The last remnants of snow framed the house-gables delicately and shone on a tavernbush. The deep doorways and courts on either side were dark and kept their secrets. Above, gildsmen’s signs swung gently, their shadows gibbet-like across Grace’s path. The press of people thickened; two mule-carts trundled by, followed by a line of washerwomen with bundles on their heads.

Still she stood there, and people skirted her without word or look, as if she were invisible. For the first time she wondered on her own impulse. She had been turned away and with crazed persistence came courting fresh abuse. None could rightly forgive such words as had been launched her way; yet she realized that they had been forgiven as soon as they were uttered. Whether more could be borne was a different matter. She was here, in chaos, seeking him, and knew herself upon the fringe of madness.

A tall figure came to stand by her, becoming part of her own unreality. She looked up into the rolling white-rimmed eyes of the Moor. He was dressed in gay motley, and his monkey, a gold chain about its narrow hips, sat on its master’s nape, holding on to his ears. The ebony face shone down like a black sun. This was the third time she had seen him, and again he seemed ominous. She stepped away a pace and he laughed, a deep rolling drum.

‘Which way, little maid?’ His voice was courtly, heavily accented, yet she was surprised he knew the English tongue. She noticed how passing people crossed themselves at sight of him. He saw it too, and chuckled more heartily.

‘Do not fear,’ he told her. ‘See how they bless me! Never was man more blessed!’ He reached behind his head and unhitched the monkey. It sprang on to Grace’s flinching shoulder and pulled back a corner of her hood with its tiny hand.

‘She likes you,’ said the gleaming face. ‘Let us promenade. Thou, and Beauty, and I, Salazar. Whither now, the three of us?’

‘Chepeside.’ The monkey pressed its cold little face against hers, and nibbled a strand of her hair.

‘Chepeside, Beauty!’ cried the Moor. A marketing woman glanced at him, flipped out the cross from her bodice and kissed it. ‘Chepeside, doña!’ Nimbly he twirled on the spot in a fluid, leaping dance-step, sketched a bow, and with his long gay arm indicated the way, as if he made her a present of it.

They walked together yet apart, and the monkey played with Grace’s hair, and tugged gently at a pearl in her ear, while the Moor sang in Spanish about two sweethearts who had quarrelled, so he said. When Grace asked if the quarrel was mended, he only laughed. They passed through six streets with a church on every corner, amid brightness and shadow and gilded gables. Soon the smell of garlic and offal mingled with that of hot roast venison and the red-blood tang of the butchers’ shops nudging the cookhouses. Chepeside roared, with haggling voices raised across the scream of slaughtered beasts. Whole deer and quartered oxen hung heavily beside slender rabbits with dark, dead-jewel eyes. Blood dripped from the beaks of bright birds. Stiffly the banners of gilds and patrons hung in profusion. All the shops looked the same. Grace stopped, and the monkey gibbered and leaped like a sparrow from her shoulder to the neck of the Moor.

‘Whom do you seek? I know them all.’

‘William Gould.’

He flourished, rose weightlessly from the ground as if bound for the sky, clapped his heels and alighting, bowed again. He was one of the highest paid entertainers in London, but he liked Grace on sight, and grudged her none of his performance.

‘There, doña!’ It was one of the larger shops. The entrance was dark with sides of beef. The second storey projected far into the street, and had ornately carved pentices. Grace turned to thank the Moor but he and his pet were gone, had faded instantly, almost into another dimension. She approached the shop, seeing that outside hung the Sun in Splendour, as if King Edward were still alive. Gould had insisted on this, and so far none had forced him to take it down. The butcher appeared in the doorway. He had seen Salazar, and hoped that he came to command a big order. Although disappointed, he gave fair greeting to Grace. Introducing herself, she spoke of Lord Stanley.

‘So, my lady,’ said Gould, impressed. ‘You are perhaps a servant of the Countess of Richmond?’

She let it pass. The butcher remained cordial until she told him why she had come. A terrible change assailed his face and he came out of the shop so that he might spit lawfully. He said, thunderously, that he could take no message, wanted no part of the errand, and she argued with him, finding within herself undreamed-of resources.

‘He is here, though,’ she said eventually.

‘Aye. The murderer’s son is here. God rot him. Only at his Majesty’s pleasure do I have him under my roof. ‘Tis none of my wish.’ And then he stopped, said: ‘You are his friend?’ Grace answered painfully: ‘His acquaintance.’ Gould spat again, and said: ‘Go up.’

She threaded through bleeding carcasses, and the green birds hung head down and beautiful in death. The butcher waved his gaping prentices aside so that she might pass by the counter to the black studded door that led aloft. ‘Have caution, mistress,’ he said sourly. ‘That one has the devil’s temper, but as he came from the devil, who can question it?’ He opened the stair door for her, and shut it, so that she was closeted in narrow blackness with a chink of light showing from under another door above. She heard her own breathing, loud and sickly, hemming her in. She lifted her skirt and ascended, knocked and waited, and then the loudest sound in that tomblike space was her own heart, over the rumbling gnaw of the rats.

John opened. As if he had lately been asleep, he was pale and shivering. When he saw her face he made to bang the door swiftly upon it, but like a weasel she nipped inside leaving a shred of her cloak caught by the draught of his vehemence. So she was in his poor and sordid room, with the bed unmade and the shutters half-open, through which came the stench of offal and slaughter, enhancing that of his own desperate grief. Once she was inside he was not angry: his face was closed like a Sunday shop.

‘My lord.’ He was still so designated, although his Captaincy of Calais had been taken from him. He was the son of a king, as she was the daughter of one. He should not dismiss her today without a fair hearing. Determined, she struck deep and fearfully into the matter’s heart.

‘My lord, it is more than four months since Bosworth Field.’

‘My father is dead.’ He did not weep now, only repeated it like a dreadful nervous gesticulation. He walked to the window, pushing the shutter apart. He looked down on the coiling mass of men and women at market. On the corner Salazar was giving a free dance and making his monkey juggle two silver coins. Black Salazar, saying a Spanish prayer under his breath for an unknown maid, whose looks he liked.

‘John.’ She grew nervous, speaking his name. She had the wit not to call him by any of the endearments that had come to them both, among the flowers, in all their transient meetings. ‘Listen to me.’ He half-turned from the window, and again she saw his resemblance to the dead King; the sombre eyes, arrogant nose and thin lips. His looks made him a danger to himself. At court, the Tudors would think they came face to face with a ghost, and question their victory … No wonder he lived in these deep-hidden surroundings. Elizabeth, too: would the sight of him strike up old rancours? This was an unbearable thought; the two people she loved best were mortal enemies. She saw that his hands shook, although he held them hard against his sides. She longed to take his hands to her heart. His fine linen shirt was crumpled and soiled; she longed to make it fresh and fair. Yet there was an extravagance in his attitude; he needed only a smear of ash on his brow, and this emboldened her. She said again, steadily:

‘Four moons since the battle, my lord. You cannot grieve forever.’

He turned fully, and his face filled her with awe. It said: I can. I do. I will.

‘You are unwell, John,’ she said gently. ‘Have you food?’

He smiled his awful, remembered smile. ‘Why? You are hungry? You see, I have become a hermit and barbarous; My servants will attend you.’ He stepped towards the door.

‘Your servants?’

‘Gould’s prentices; they wait on me if I call loudly enough. Surly, greasy slovens … no! My father loved the common people. Much good did it do him,’ he said savagely.

Now she remembered what she had to say. ‘John! Kings have died before. Many have died. It is a part of life; to the strong, the victory …’

He crossed to her and stood so close that their bodies almost touched. His face was masked by loathing, and his lips were white.

‘Christ’s Passion!’ he said softly. ‘Of what do you prate, lady? You, who know naught of true princes, or of courage or of despair? The Tudor had no strength. His paid assassins, though sworn men of my father’s, did that bloody, day all that was needful. Stanley and his brother – there’s a special corner of Hell for them! Northumberland, who jealousy held his hand back from the fight until it was too late. And the others, devils every one, whose poisoned minds kept them from my father’s side.’

He spoke then of the battle, quoting the witnessed account given to him by Sir William Stonor, who, wounded ands broken, called at Sheriff Hutton on his way to York. He recounted, word for word, the tale that had almost stripped him of sanity and still haunted his heart.

‘…he would have killed Tudor; he was so near. Then Stanley made a flank attack, and the Household, a hundred against two thousand, was shattered, destroyed. Some of the Tudor’s men were the gaol delivery from France, desperate villains pardoned so that they might murder the King of England. Chivalry died that day. And the betrayal in battle was the noblest part!’

He swallowed hard, and said:

‘They stripped my father and threw him across a mule. They spat on him and struck him even in death. They brought him back, naked through Leicester with a rope about his neck, a rope such as common felons wear. Crossing the bridge, the mule ran amok and broke my father’s hanging head upon the wall. With knives they dishonoured his poor flesh … No more, mistress. Go away.’

He was again at the window, darkly silhouetted. Grace sat down upon the tossed and tearstained bed. Twice she tried to speak and failed. Then a whisper emerged.

‘Before God, I did not know of this.’

‘Yes, you did,’ he said, quite calmly. ‘If you live close to the witch, you knew it all.’

Like a blinding blow, remembrance came. She had witnessed Elizabeth, crazed by Richard’s rejection of Bess, saying: Let him be killed with ignominy. Let him be reviled. Do this, Stanley, in remembrance of me. And Stanley’s answer: It is done, Madame.

The tired, monotonous voice went on.

‘Tudor gave him no grave, no kingly interment. He lay in Leicester’s Swinemarket for three days while the flies and the buzzards drank at his wounds and the people came to curse him. Poor naked wretch!’

He made a queer sound, half laugh, half sob.

‘Where…’ said Grace.

‘Where does he lie now? A nun, whose place is sure in Paradise, came and took him away. She and her sisters buried him in their mean and holy house, and bought Masses for him. These were women! Shaped in the same wise as your mistress, and as remote from her as dove from serpent. Yes.’ He turned a little towards her. ‘Bear back this news, that Richard lies easy. Watch Woodville frown. She cannot touch him now.’

Grace’s fingers found the red-eyed ring. Slowly she pulled it off and held it in her palm.

Again John came to stand before her. His eyes were deeply sunken, as if weeping had drained them dry.

‘Did you not know she was evil?’ he said quite gently. ‘She is the canker in the rose, the scourge of dynasties. Men have died for her; men have died through her. Before our time, there was the fierce Queen Margaret. Men said she was of Hell, but beside her handmaid, Elizabeth, she was saintly. Weigh my words, and before you run back to your mistress shed a tear. For England and Plantagenet; their curse is accomplished.’

She was silent. She extended her palm where the ruby glowed. He looked down at it.

‘Would to God things had been otherwise,’ he said. ‘Why were you not born a milkmaid or a tapwench, someone apart from the court? Like that poor maid who guided me when when I wept. I would have loved you as well. Why were you destined to serve my enemy?’

And she knew he was giving her the chance to denounce Elizabeth, to join him in vilification. Wearily, she bowed her head.

‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘Who can measure destiny? I love you, John. And I love Elizabeth.’

‘Despite all? Why?’

She looked at him again. ‘Would that I could tell you. Perhaps … because I am her one advocate in all the world!’

‘Whom she does not deserve,’ he said grimly.

‘I have always loved her. I have always been loyal. If I miscall her now, I betray my own loyalty.’

‘What is loyalty?’ he said slowly.

‘Your father’s raison.’ Her eyes were dry. If she must look her last on him; let it be clearly. ‘Loyalty binds me. He never swerved. When he had time to talk to me, my father King Edward, used to tell me of this.’

She took the ring, placing it on the carved windowsill between the shutters; it caught the sun, being bright as new blood, with rays of light making it a star.

‘Farewell,’ she said. ‘I sorrow for you, and love you. You need not see my face again.’

As if she walked through water, she crossed the boards of the small and dusty room. Faintness caught her for a moment; she touched the bedpost for support. Farewell, kiss; farewell, unknown joy. This little death has dignity.

‘O Christ! I want to die!’

His voice impaled her. She turned and saw him on his knees at the window, the ruby clutched in his hand. His head was bowed, resting on the sill. He trembled so much that one of the shutters, unlatched, swung to with a crash. So she came back to his side, and touched his slender, shaking back, and tried to raise him, but he had deadly heaviness so she knelt with him, and for the first time in months, laid her hand on his and touched his burning face, and kissed him. He whispered: ‘Don’t …’ and no more.

‘Don’t stay? Don’t go?’

He would never ask, she knew; his shame was great. But his answer was there in the drowning way he clung to her hand, and fumbled with the ring, hurting her finger as he pushed it on again. There was one more thing to say, and still kneeling, she said it, carefully, the private oath.

‘I, Grace Plantagenet, being neither wife nor leman to any man and by this reason free, do pledge my heart to my dearly beloved John of Gloucester. In this place, as God witness my deed. And should I swerve from John may God take my life and damn me eternally.’

‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely. He raised her and took her in her arms, clasping her so hard that they both swayed against the wall, and his kiss brought a drop of blood into her mouth that mingled with their tears.

She had dreamed of love many times, thinking it to be a thing of softness, swift and gay as a butterfly, and as trivial. When he lifted her and took her to the bed it was the death of her dreams, and she was afraid. Love was not kind; it was a driving storm that stripped her spirit naked. Far away she heard her own sobbing and his words of love. He was the wind and she the leaf; in his arms she knew dissolution. She became the altar for his sacrifice, the balm for his wounds.

For a space they were apart from the world. The squalid room floated, a fragile rainbow bubble, and sheltered them.

He slept a little, wrapped in her hair. When he awoke, there was fresh colour in his cheeks, and he was John again. She held him, looking like a madonna down at his face. Outside a little breeze had freshened and the shutters slapped against the casement, creaking like the timbers of a galleon. He took her hand and filled it with kisses, then raised himself to gaze at her.

‘My lady.’ He looked at the marks of his mouth upon her honey flesh. ‘I have dishonoured you.’

She smiled. ‘You have bound me to you.’

He sighed, searching her face; she knew his mind. How long before the return to Westminster? The parting kiss, the void, doubly tragic after past joy. As if bidden, the brass note of Paul’s struck. Outside the chamber door, the stair groaned as someone trod, listened, and went away.

‘The butcher,’ said John bitterly ‘Or one of his louts. How many hours has that ear been at the door?’

She kissed him. ‘When I arrived the bell was sounding.’

‘So you must go.’ He turned his face away, and waited, holding his breath.

‘By my faith, love!’ said Grace. ‘This bolster is stuffed with rocks, I swear. How can you sleep?’

She felt under the pillows and drew out a leather bag. Gold coins spilled from it and rolled about the bed.

‘That is my pension,’ John said quietly. ‘My pension from the Tudor. Twenty pounds a year. I have not spent one penny, nor shall I, until I can use it against him.’

‘God knows,’ he went on, ‘why he has been so bountiful. Be sure though that he has spread word of his generosity, so that the public may applaud.’ He frowned, threw up a gold angel and caught it. Drawing Grace close, he laid his cheek, against hers. ‘And yet … it would pleasure me to spend the money. On you, sweeting. We could be merry with it.’

She closed her eyes. Outside, the quarter boomed. She must dress and leave, or it would be too late. John’s voice went softly on.

‘I keep it beneath my pillow in the hope that one of Gould’s lads might steal it, and then I could be rid of it. Graceless, unkindly fellows … and Gould hates me. He would poison me if he dared.’

Grace lay, breathing his warmth. Her gown and cloak lay on the floor. It was a hundred miles to walk and pick them up and put them on. Quiet and blissful, John set his lips upon the crown of her hair.

‘I am hungry,’ he said.

‘We have been here most of the day.’

‘Yes. And now …’

‘Now.’

‘Now you must return to the Palace.’ She sat up and looked down at his face, its sadness, the transiency of his joy.

‘I cannot marry you,’ he said gravely. ‘It would mean asking the Tudor’s assent, and I will ask him for nothing.’

She bowed her head, silent.

‘Go, go,’ he said roughly. ‘Already I feel the pain.’

She took his face between her hands, and found herself speaking words that might have been long rehearsed; words without which time itself were void.

‘I shall go nowhere without you,’ she said. ‘Have I not sworn? Never send me away, my dear love.’

Against her breast she felt the quick hard beat of his heart, so vibrantly alive.

‘You are sure?’

She nodded, smiling; he leaped up, seizing her discarded gown and bringing it to her where she lay.

‘Get up, my love!’

Between tears and laughter she looked at him.

‘We’ll go out,’ he declared. ‘To the best cookhouse in London. I shall be a merchant–’ he started to fling the gold angels about the bed – ‘and you a rich and pampered merchant’s wife. I thought I had forgotten how to be happy!’

Naked and laughing, he said, ‘Hurry, love; it grows late. Come, love, wife, my honey sweet!’ She caught his mood and, sprang up, quickly making herself fine again with the aid of his dingy steel mirror. But when they were ready, a doubt assailed her, and made her new joy bleak and terrible for a moment.

‘Elizabeth…’ she began, and saw his face change, and went to him, putting her arms about his neck.

‘My heart, don’t blame me; don’t chide me if I speak of her at times.’ He sighed, and held her close, saying: ‘What then, love?’

‘She will be treated fairly? She is in favour with King Henry.’ She said it as if to convince herself.

For a moment he was silent. Then he said: ‘Doubtless.’ He opened the door and Grace went down the dark stairs with a light step. As he followed her, he said softly, for his own peace: ‘Elizabeth! Tudor will see you damned!’

‘Way for Elizabeth, the Queen-Dowager!’

‘Welcome to Winchester, highness!’

The words were gold in her ears. Accompanied by Dorset, she walked into the splendid hall. She told herself: these words mean more than my estates, my jewels, more even than the bounty I have lately surrendered, and for which the King will pay me in lieu. These titles are more than Sheen, through which we passed on the journey, or Greenwich, or the Queens’ College, Cambridge, or Windsor, or Eltham.

Queen-Dowager! Highness! These hard-won words that break and vanish like bubbles on the air are more than the seat of princes. Does this mean that I have changed, grown old, less striving? Who knows? I am content with my saviour’s ordinance, and I will tell him so, given the chance.

Elegant and emaciated in dark blue, she entered Winchester, allowed for the first time to visit Bess. All around courtiers bowed down, corn in a gale. The familiar feeling of near-divinity touched her. The royal matriarch comes! Winchester itself she did not know well; only now, in Henry’s time, did it assume the stamp of majesty. She had visited the cathedral which stood rosily weathered in an emerald close. There, within the holy quiet she had seen the fabulous Round Table, the King’s innovation. Painted with the Tudor Rose, it lay beneath the Dragon banners with sunlight shafting down upon twelve empty thrones. Mystic silence surrounded it, as it awaited King Arthur’s return.

Summer was nearly over, and Winchester also waited, for Arthur’s practical incarnation. Henry’s progress was complete. As Elizabeth and Dorset travelled their southerly road, royal courtiers had overtaken them, crying of safety and success. Now, as Elizabeth and her son proceeded up the hall, the King’s mother rose to receive them. The Countess was not pleased; but after a summer of asking she could no longer withhold the sight of Bess. She kissed Elizabeth, and gave Dorset a gimlet look. Then she led him to the Queen’s apartments. Every door was guarded and the ways were clotted with monks and priests and nurses. Throughout the palace preparation for the King’s arrival was apparent. Servants smoothed fresh Arras on the walls, strewed a bushel of gillyflowers, bullied one another. Yet within the Queen’s chamber all was peace; an almost unhealthy quiet, a tomblike tranquillity.

Great with child, Bess reclined on a day-bed. Her face was bored and flushed. An abigail fanned her tirelessly. The Queen’s hair was loose, and wheaten tendrils waved in the draught. Her boredom deepened visibly at sight of the Countess, but when Elizabeth entered she brightened a little. Margaret bustled forward, dismissing the maid with a sharp handclap.

‘Daughter! Still abed! You should stretch your limbs, or the babe will grow stunted: See, I have a visitor for you.’

Bess stretched out her hand to Elizabeth. Her eyes rolled saying: See how I am persecuted! but she smiled.

To the Countess, Elizabeth said: ‘I will speak to the Queen alone.’

‘Do not weary her,’ said Margaret commandingly, and went out.

‘Mother, be seated,’ said Bess. ‘You too, Thomas. Elizabeth took a corner of the bed, and Dorset hitched himself on to an oak chest.

‘My daughter,’ said Elizabeth. A surprising memory jolted her: Bess in her cradle, with Edward’s large sparkling face bending down. What shall we call you? Elizabeth? Yet not as fair as my own, my peerless Elizabeth! Moved by her own thought, she leaned to kiss the Queen.

‘We have been apart too long,’ she said, and realized the truth of it. Had she been dreaming? Where had the summer gone? None had the right to hold her from her daughter, or her sons. Richard and Ned would be grown now, big boys. And Dorset, who did not often follow the train of her thought, said:

‘Madame, it’s good to be one family again.’ Drumming his heels like a schoolboy against the chest, he said: ‘How are my little brothers, Dick and Ned?’

Bess reached towards a bowl of fruit, took a peach and examined it. One side was blackly bruised, marring the tawny lusciousness. She threw the peach back into the dish.

‘How should I know?’ she said, wishing someone would rub her aching back. She raised her blue eyes, smoothed the stomach filled with destiny. ‘I thought they were with you.’ She found a ripe grape and ate it – content to lie and wait, and reckon nothing.

Henry rode in with Morton an hour later. He flung his reins ro a groom and strode through the portal. He was still grimed from the hasty last stages of his journey, but was anxious to see that all was well with Bess, and went straight to her chamber. He had thought about her constantly on the progress. At Worcester, where the people openly mourned Richard, he had been obliged to hang a score of them on the High Cross – an example more salutary than the five hundred marks he fined them. He had watched them drop and strangle, and Bess’s face had intruded, overlaying the spectacle, so that the victims were no more than so many insects brushed by storm. At York, the ordeal of entry under Micklegate Bar was tempered by the thought of Bess. The eyes of hate had been like fireflashes. He had ordained that York’s Crown dues should be lowered (better to woo than to war at this juncture); and their resentment sailed over him like migrating birds, even when someone tried vainly to assassinate Northumberland. Bess’s swollen body was in the forefront of his mind; a living pledge of new hope, the towering beginning of an everlasting line. Only in Gloucester, the dead King’s own Duchy, had a chilling thought struck: what if the child were a girl? He took ironic comfort from an old proverb: it takes a man to get a girl! and he was not, even now, altogether sure of his own manhood.

One of the most satisfying recent events had been the arrest of the Stafford brothers. A minor skirmish was quelled by troops waged by the Yeomen. The elder Stafford had trodden air at Tower Hill. His brother had been pardoned at the last moment; again, an example. He, for sure, would walk warily henceforward.

And Morton was working on a new appraisal of the tax system.

‘This came to me, your Majesty; as Chancellor, I shall say: if you spend liberally, you must have money to spare for the King. If you live frugally, you must have saved – money to spare likewise. I will have them in a fork, Sire.’

Henry had weighed the idea. ‘It will make us unpopular, my lord.’

Squinting impatiently, Morton answered: ‘Maybe. It will also make the Treasury strong again. Is that not your desire?’

Morton was to be Cardinal Archbishop.

Of the other factions that had plagued the King, a few were still in flux; Francis Lovell had escaped the purge levied on the Staffords’ adherents and was in hiding, possibly near Oxford. He could wait. John, Earl of Lincoln and Richard’s named heir, had accompanied the progress as a member of Henry’s Council; not one sneeze had escaped Lincoln without being noted down. Already Henry had seen the restlessness there, but Lincoln was more subtle than most. The King decided to withhold all but the most trivial honours from Lincoln, and see where unrest led. As for Sir William Stanley – he was a born traitor. The way he had betrayed Richard still haunted Henry, and he watched Sir William closely. Had not his astrologer bade the King beware the Buck’s Head? So they were all surveyed, measured, hung-over by an invisible Damoclean edge. ‘Time, my lord,’ the King had remarked to Morton, as they rode down the Fosse Way. ‘Time, not death, is the leveller. And I have time aplenty.’

Cadwallader smiled. The seed of Wales stood upright in its mother’s womb.

The pattern dovetailed; without Morton there would have been many loose ends. Everything moved with an uncanny progression of rightness. Lesser men than Henry would have been tempted to rest their spirit, to reap enjoyment from sovereignty. Not he. Eternally watchful, mirthless and shrewd, he moved in an aura of calculation, vigilant for the cloaked whisper, the ambiguous word, the lightest warning. Sir James Tyrrel had done his work and gone to a commission in Guisnes. Everything was in place.

The sight of Elizabeth, confronting him as he burst into the Queen’s chamber, dislocated these steady thoughts. The Queen-Dowager was on her knees, instantly, her wimpled head bowed with one or two stray locks of silver-gilt, or white, showing beneath the brow-band. Henry strode first to his Queen and set his lips to her forehead, while behind them, Morton raised pale fingers in a general benediction. Then Henry turned and raised the Queen-Dowager. Her eyes were misted with an emotion unknown to him.

‘Welcome, welcome, Sire.’ He accepted this gravely. He bowed, in the sweated cloth-of-gold habit. One of his finger-rings caught in the Queen-Dowager’s trailing dark-blue sleeve as she bent to his hand. She laughed, caught the laugh in a half-sob, and disentangled cloth from jewel.

‘An audience with you, Sire; my one request,’ she whispered.

In that moment, unknown to both of them, Melusine sparred with Cadwallader. The Dragon coiled about the serpent. She was strong, sinuous, but he had claws and a tongue of flame. A wider ocean engulfed Melusine’s little lake. Her twining grip loosed; she fell.

He spent five minutes with Bess and an hour with her physicians. Then, having taken neither food nor drink, he went to confer with Morton. Together they pored over the progress’s accounts; the revenues levied and the gifts received and bestowed. Henry was alarmed to see how little profit showed. The waging of troops to crush the Staffords had marred what might otherwise have been a worthwhile expedition. The royal entourage seemed to have eaten and drunk as if each meal were its last.

He sat on a low gilt throne, cracking his knuckles and listening dismally to Morton reading from his rolls, of vast quantities of beef, eggs, salt and beer. Stationed about the chamber were the Yeomen, and outside the door another gold and scarlet dozen stood, death-still. Henry began to cough. Spring, not crisp autumn, was the season for his tertian fever; yet on a side table lay a covered flagon containing elderflower water to soothe his chest. Morton stopped reading.

‘Your cough is worse,’ he said. ‘Should you not take your ease, now?’

Henry sniffed his own armpit. The cloth-of-gold was rankly soaked. One of the Yeomen went silently to a coffer and began to take out fresh linen. Morton gathered up the parchments that lay like folded lilies about the foot of the dais. It was not easy being Chancellor; every farthing must be accounted for, and if a bill were carelessly written, it must be done again. All over the palace clerks went rubbing finger-joints and red eyes.

‘What more of urgency?’ asked Henry.

‘Only these to see, Sire.’

Henry raked the account with a glance, and scrawled his initials in the Household Book. Then he rose and went to where fresh clothes lay ready for his approval.

‘The Queen-Dowager, Sire,’ said Morton carefully. ‘She has waited rather long.’

Two of the Yeomen peeled away Henry’s sweated robe. One whispered: what colour today, dread Sire? and he pointed to a velvet doublet, darkly sheen as a crow’s wing. Pages of the bath entered and went through into the next room to prepare a herbal tub. Henry said to the Yeomen standing round the walls: ‘Dismiss!’ and they filed out.

‘I will see her,’ he said. ‘Bid her to me, in an hour.’ He coughed again, and Morton’s eyes grew troubled.

‘It’s nothing,’ said the King. ‘I shall live for ever.’

She was admitted at the appointed time. When she entered Henry had his back to her, his shoulders a little hunched, and coughing softly. Her first thought was: he has changed his suit, why does he wear black? He should wear more gold, scarlet, to deify and dignify him for the person he is. She knelt. A spasm of twitching seized her head and hand, maddeningly inappropriate at this moment of consummation. She controlled herself with difficulty, while he turned and came to her so that she could take his hands, to which she bent first her lips and then her brow. And she found herself dumb. She had waited too long. Henry was her saviour; anything she might say would be superfluous. Stiffly she rose and swayed a little before him. She said softly: ‘Sire, I rejoice in your return, and in the fruitfulness of my daughter’s womb. She will, I know, fulfil our destiny.’

This was a mistake; his eyes narrowed. ‘Our destiny, Madame?’ She felt a blush warming her neck, as if she were a naughty child caught out in some misdemeanour. Ridiculous, for the King, her son-in-law, was young enough to be her son!

‘Destiny, Sire. It was a happy day for me when you won the field.’ She smiled. ‘You have restored me, and my family. I can never forget it.’

She sought his hands again. They were perfumed from his bath; they were bony and unresponsive. Neither did he speak, but weighed her with his long eyes, the eyes of unknown significance.

‘Sire …’ She let her hands slide away. He bowed almost imperceptibly.

‘Very well,’ he said in his high, measured voice, in which the accents of France and Wales blended. ‘So you are pleased, Madame. Was there more you wished to say?’

‘No … only, I await my revenues from the estates you have bought from me.’

‘My Chancellor has this in hand.’ There was another pause, and he foresaw her departure within a moment. Then she said, casting down her blue-veined lids:

‘Sire – I would have my sons with me again. I have not seen Richard for a year and a half; Edward I have not seen for years. I would have them with me, for their nurture and my comfort.’

Henry began to cough, a tight rasping bark, and turned from her, walking to the side table where his medicine stood The cup’s cover bore an unbroken seal, testament that the draught had been sampled and found safe. He fingered the cup, contemplated it for three or four minutes. It was as if he had not heard her.

‘My sons, highness,’ said Elizabeth.

The black velvet shoulders rose closer to his ears as he coughed; he moved his head so that one long sombre eye studied her. Did he not understand her request? Perhaps he had the same fears of her that Richard had had – as if he could ever mistrust her? Words tripped and tumbled from her lips.

‘Sire, you must not misconstrue my intent; my allegiance is totally yours and the Queen’s, and the new blessed heir when he comes. Do not think that any rebellion will break over the persons of my sons. I myself will keep them in submission. They cannot aspire to the Crown. The Act of Titulus Regius …’

He turned swiftly. The lean face was tinged with a barbarous outrage, yet he smiled, a smile to be seen on the face of a corpse. Sudden apprehension filled her. The Act of Titulus Regius did not exist. Treason to mention it, or even to remember that it had ever existed. Through its repeal Bess was Queen and she herself Queen-Dowager. Yet men had been hanged for whispering of it. Henry picked up the cup of balsam, broke the seal and drank silently. Paralysed with guilt, confused by witless paradox, she watched him; the bony throat moving, the little domestic movements of his hands. Disproportionate fear was born and crouched in her like a beast. At last he set down the cup.

‘What do you want, Madame?’ he said softly.

A little of her old spirit flared. She would not kneel to him again. Not she, who had had a King weeping and prostrate before her … Centuries ago. She lifted her sharp chin.

‘My sons, Sire. Edward and Richard, my sons.’

There was that chilling smile again. Even more softly, he said:

‘But your sons are dead, Madame. The traitor Plantagenet had them murdered, so that he might usurp my throne. Did you not cry of it yourself? Day and night? that Gloucester had them smothered in the Tower?’

For a second she felt her heart stop and begin again with a sickening bound. This a nightmare, from which I soon must wake! Or the King jests with me, giving credence to Monton’s lie, which I helped spread in honour of our cause …

The King does not jest.

She heard her own shrill voice.

‘Your Grace!’

Sudden anger lit the yellowish eyes. He said contemptuously:

‘Madame, you forget yourself. We are ‘your Majesty’!’

Then he quit the room, thin and silent in his black; shoulders lifted like a raven. She was alone, staring blindly, tasting blood where she had bitten her lip.

Throughout the spring and summer, Chepeside seethed about John and Grace, and they were a part of it. During the day they walked the City, preferring this to their small room to which slaughterhouse roars and the sound of Gould bullying his prentices ascended. Gould grew sourer than ever; would not even bid good-day, but there was no spoken criticism of the menage, and none suggested they should leave the lodging. The street itself was quick to gossip, and had cause; John spent like a sailor. Hand in hand with Grace, he walked the murmurous ways, down Poultry, the Vintry, and Jewry with its dark shops and darker proprietors. Along Bread Street and Milk Street the lovers took their way; they entered the best taverns. John dressed like a prince in a long tawny mantle, its sleeves fringed with gold, and wore a black cap with a feather. There was something in his face that made folk step aside and the prentices whistle only at a safe distance. Upon Grace he lavished the King’s pension. In Candlewick Street he bought lengths of murrey and wool soft as a cat’s back, and he ordered a Flemish seamstress to make them up into the latest fashion. He dressed Grace in green, Kendal green, and sapling green; wearing the hoods and gowns of his choosing, her eyes were like burning jade. Nightly, when the butcher had gone home to his Bishopsgate mansion, and the small upper room was quiet, John peeled the willow strands from their white core. She lay tranquilly lapped in green, flickering, candlelit green, the colour of love and hope. So fair were the nights that she grudged the day beginning. Sometimes she awoke before the night was done and, still gathered close in his sleeping arms, would think: if we could sleep, and never wake! A thought, brought by the dark hours, which struck her as unnatural and morbid. Then her peace and her unrest would battle, and the silver shadow of Elizabeth would intrude, wafting down to light upon the bed.

In the City a bizarre rumour arose. On the corner of Eastchepe and Candlewick a strange knight, coming face to face with John, threw himself on his knees and cried: ‘Jesu! Richard liveth yet!’ and wept uncontrollably. He was gently disillusioned, but the day ended badly; John neither spoke nor ate, but stood for hours at the open casement, his arms stretched wide on the shutters as if crucified. Grace sorrowed. She had thought him to be mended.

‘Are you happy, my love?’ she asked, when the spasm had burned itself away with the dawning.

‘Are you?’ he said anxiously, as if he feared a parting. At such times she was hard put to express her happiness. Never in her life had such kindness come her way. Now it was loaded upon her in such ardent measure that often she was uncertain what to do with its excesses. They stood together at the window and he held her. The crown of her head was level with his neck. She was so slight she seemed to melt against him. He bent his head to touch his lips to hers.

‘Yes. I’m happy. Or I should be the most ungrateful dog in the world,’ he said.

Grace leaned from the window. By stretching her hand she could almost touch the gable of the house opposite. There was a woman in the window, who quickly banged her shutters closed. John pulled Grace back into his arms and covered her mouth with his. She was unaware of the street’s opinion; that she was called a whore and he a popinjay … He thought: there are some who see evil and some whom it passes by, invisible as the wind. Whether this is stupidity or saintliness, who knows? I only know that without Grace I should have died.

‘What shall we do today, sweeting? There’s a cockfight at Southwark, and we could dine at the Tabard. Or we could go to Petty Wales and watch them picking pockets. At Billingsgate the Fishmongers are rehearsing a play. But …’

‘I’d rather stay here,’ she said. ‘I feel …’ He looked at her sharply. To him she seemed pale.

‘You’re not sick?’ he cried. There were still occasional outbreaks of the sweating sickness in the City. Or … He looked at her closely. There was a sickness that was no sickness …

‘I am only a little weary,’ she said, and laughed. Relief, coupled with a whimsical disappointment, showed on his face. My love, he had said, more than once: if I should get you with child! And: Yes! Let it be, then! Let there be more Plantagenets, for even bastard Plantagenets are better than Tudor’s spawn! And his lovemaking had brought fear; fear that swiftly became delight.

Now he said: ‘So be it. We’ll watch the world from our window. I’ll buy mutton from Master Gloom below, and have one of his boys cook it.’

Grace prepared the table, brightening it with kingcups gathered in Paul’s churchyard. She and John played cards, made light, teasing love. He had a brittle uneasy merriment, as if his flashing temper were only just held in rein. After an hour, a prentice, carrying a tray, kicked at the door, entered, banged the meal down and left, clumping in his worn-out boots. Grace lifted the cover of the dish; the saddle of mutton was black on one side and raw on the other. When she touched it, it fell apart, white with maggots and stinking like a month-old corpse. John’s lips paled with fury.

‘Our host has a right merry humour,’ he said. He pushed back his chair. ‘God’s passion! How dare he treat us like this!’ He stormed from the room, and she heard him running downstairs, angrily calling the prentice back. His sharp imperious voice and the mumbling replies from the youth rose indistinctly.

‘Gould is occupied,’ he told her, returning. ‘Jesu!–’ pacing about with anger – ‘I have had my belly full of Gould and this place. Love, how would you like to leave it?’

‘Where could we go?’ She was surprised.

‘To Ireland.’ He knelt beside her and took her hands. ‘Sweetheart, they would welcome us there. They are still strong for my father. Desmond’s kin still live – both your father and mine loved them well.’

‘Desmond,’ she said slowly. A strange little memory, a cradle-dream, tantalizingly vague, crept in her mind. ‘The Earl died before I was born.’

‘I will write,’ said John. ‘A courteous letter; I’ll not press or commit them. Come to Ireland!’

The door rattled discreetly; a young man entered bearing a fresh tray. This prentice was fair and sturdy, with melancholy blue eyes in a comely face beneath a straight-cut fringe. Without a word he replaced the stinking mutton with a fair piece of beef, perfectly cooked. The mutton he tossed out of the open window, where it landed in the gutter, to the rapture of a bony cur.

‘My thanks,’ said John, bewildered.

The youth bowed. ‘Your pardon, highness. The other was a mistake. Master Gould is busy, and young Harry does not know bad meat from the Pope’s head.’

‘I’ve not seen you before,’ said John, frowning.

‘I’m new to the trade,’ said the prentice, and a cloud crossed his face. ‘Moreover, it doesn’t suit me. It’s a bad trade, with a bad master. I was to be trained for holy orders, but … No matter, my lord. Enjoy your dinner.’ He bowed again, and stepped back a pace nearer the door.

John, carving-knife poised, said curiously: ‘It’s a far cry from the priesthood to the slaughter-house … or is it? What changed your fortunes?’

‘My father followed Richard Plantagenet,’ said the youth simply. ‘The wrong fortunes, therefore; I bore the reprisal …

Very carefully John laid down the knife. His voice shook a little as he said: ‘You have my sympathy.’

They stared at each other. Then the prentice said, with a kind of shudder: ‘My lord, I should beg your pardon for more than the meat!’

‘Well?’ said John softly.

The young man’s eyes were fixed on his. ‘Walls are thin sir. My lord, I overheard your conversation. I heard you speak of Ireland. I cannot leave without asking forgiveness for my ears, or without offering my services.’

‘What services?’

The prentice wiped his hands on the sides of his apron.

‘If you have correspondence for Ireland,’ he said very softly, ‘I could help you. With this new King–’ a look of utter abhorrence crossed his smooth face – ‘it is most difficult to transmit bills. His agents are everywhere. Even here.’

Grace spoke, amazing herself: ‘This is treason!’

The youth was trembling. ‘Lady, lady, I know! But I can help you both. For the love of God, don’t refuse my aid. And if you do, I pray you, forget I ever spoke of this.’

‘Be still.’ John’s eyes were far away. Colour stained his cheeks. ‘I did not know. Before God, I did not know there were still loyal followers who dared speak their mind. You, for one, risk your life. Gould is Henry’s man!’

‘The more fool he, to love a tyrant and a usurper.’

‘I would make use of your services, your good services,’ said John softly. ‘Come, sit down. Eat and drink with us.’

The prentice laughed sadly. ‘And lose my employment? Later, my lord. Now, we have little time. Listen: I can transmit your bill. My brother is a sea-captain bound for Wexford. He sails next month if the tides be right. Sir,’ he said soberly, ‘I would take your letter myself if I could. I long for Ireland … the White Rose still blooms there. They drink–’ he was almost choking – ‘to Richard’s blessed memory.’

John rose, and embraced the youth, greasy apron and all. When they separated, tears shone in both pairs of eyes.

‘Serve me,’ he said. ‘What is your name?’

‘Ralph, sir.’

‘Serve me, Ralph, in honour of your brave words. You cannot know what you have brought me this day. The finest dinner in the world – a dinner of hope, of comfort. God bless you, Ralph.’

‘And you, my lord.’

‘I will write the letter.’

‘When shall I come for it? I must not visit you too often. Gould watches constantly, for any covert doings.’

‘In a little while. In a week or so. I must think how to write it. It is to friends I have not seen for years, and I do not want them to find me presumptuous. I’ll make some excuse to see you, send for you.’

‘Yes. Next time I’ll drink with you. We’ll toast Plantagenet …’ He looked quickly towards the door. ‘That is Gould shouting for me. I must go.’

He raised his hand as if in blessing, went swiftly from the room and ran downstairs. Grace rose from the table and put her arms about John. He was weeping, shaking, smiling. He was changed. She had never seen him so happy – at least, not since his father’s death.

Dorset was more frightened than he had ever been. His mother had come from the King’s privy chamber like a horribly animated doll. Straight past where he waited she walked, with her head held to one side and her face working as if struck by countless little blows. He remembered a tower at Grafton Regis when he was a child; a Jack-o’-the-clock, a small brass man who struck the hour. Like Jack, she went with one thin hand wagging before her; dreadfully stiff and steady she went towards the Queen’s room. She was turned away, and Dorset caught up with her, as she fell swooning to the stones.

A physician pronounced the malady a rare palsy. Tincture of yarrow was prescribed, pennywort balm and daily bleeding. Desperate, Dorset followed these instructions faithfully. Gradually Elizabeth’s twitching subsided save for an occasional frightful spasm, but she lay without speaking. Dorset sat holding the bowl of trickling rubies. Each drop taken seemed to come directly from her face, and each shade of pallor seemed to drain the years away, so that she looked like a dying young girl. On the seventh day Dorset dismissed the leech. ‘Enough. Do you want to suck the soul from her?’ He wondered what had passed in the King’s chamber to bring his mother to this, and decided that he would rather not know. The Queen’s time was near, and Winchester was in a state of preoccupation. Twelve doctors and midwives were in residence and already quarrelling fiercely among themselves. Margaret Beaufort had taken her bed into Bess’s room and looked likely to remain there until Doomsday. So Dorset sat, ill-at-ease, in his mother’s chamber, his eyes fixed on her waxen catelepsy. Her servants had been changed; Renée had gone to France with a pension from the Countess of Richmond; Catherine, now not quite so complacent, was at Pembroke as wife of Jasper Tudor. Grace he scarcely missed. There were only about half a dozen women who spent their time leaning on walls, watching Elizabeth, and yawning behind-hand. They are waiting for her to die, thought Dorset, and he abused them in an uncourtly manner.

‘She will soon be strong again!’ he said fiercely. I pray that I am right. Without her I am alone, save for my uncle Edward, always at sea. I would not be alone in a Tudor court. He bent to his mother, stroked and massaged her left hand. She opened her eyes.

‘You have come back,’ she said. Then her gaze cleared and hardened on Dorset’s face. ‘Ah. It’s you, Tom.’

There was a shiver around the wall as the women assumed attentive attitudes.

‘Take me …’ whispered Elizabeth.

‘Where, Madam my mother?’

‘Take me to Bradgate,’ she breathed. Dorset got up to ask the King’s assent to their congé. Wildly Elizabeth wagged her stricken head.

‘Do not ask him, or tell him. Take me to Bradgate. Do this, Tom, if ever you loved me.’

As it had first been spring, now it was autumn, coloured in sadness. They rounded the bend in the long drive and she leaned and stretched out trembling hands to catch the last leaves before they crackled redly beneath hoof and wheel. Dorset rode a shining horse, its coat the colour of the leaves; behind the carriage came a handful of incurious servants picked and paid by Dorset in a hurry. The escape from Winchester had been delayed.

Bess was brought to bed before her time, on the twentieth of September. Margaret Beaufort took sole charge, and it was only after seven days that the frail Queen-Dowager was allowed to view her puny grandchild. Henry was in the chamber, and scarcely looked at Elizabeth. He loomed lean and very pale over the cradle, and he had been weeping. The child was a boy. Arthur had come again. The token of greatness fleshed; the prophecy fulfilled. Because of this, did Henry acquiesce to Bess’s plea that Elizabeth should attend the baptism? Or was it only for appearances’ sake that the Queen-Dowager was included in the ceremony? Whatever the reason, before she could go to Bradgate, she endured the five-hour ritual. The baby Arthur had cried dolefully throughout; he had received the blessing of God, Our Lady, St. George, his father and mother, and possibly Cadwallader, for whom he was very nearly named. Once or twice Elizabeth had felt like swooning; only by holding her hands tightly within her sleeves could she control the palsy. She listened to the sonorous blessings and the infant’s sad mewling, and she watched Henry. Henry, who should have earned all her hatred, all her destructive powers. She realized numbly that these had been expended on others less worthy of them. Power was gone, leaving only despair.

A gold leaf drifted into her hand. Queen’s Gold! The litter halted in the drive which, in spring, had been an artery in a bluebell heart, hymned by birds and festooned with primrose and violet. Like the echoes of a dream, voices sang, a horse tossed its head; John leaned and caressed her. Isabella! My heart’s joy! The drive was overgrown with great trailing thorns. Dying blackberries, kissed by the devil, mouldered in a tangle of briars. Decay and desolation answered the same in her heart. While the grooms hacked at the obstruction, she lay back with her thoughts. Some were too terrible; her mind leaped away like a wounded stag. Some were too poignant. She remembered the time when she, a young girl, was transfixed by admiration for the spell-casting Jacquetta, the fire and kindness of Marguerite, later turned warrior and vixen. Her mind moved through ball and pageant, gowns and gossip and aspiration; King Henry gibbered and pointed at her bosom; John was mirrored in Eltham lake … from this she trembled, sprang forward in time to where Edward, the Rose, kissed and clung and possessed; cried and cursed her over Desmond. The vision changed; the Fiend lay dead with a gaping wound in his side. Richard of Gloucester knelt to bless the corpse. Behind closed eyes she saw George of Clarence flaunting, she heard the whispers of his dreadful end. Marguerite’s yellow face and half-bald skull moved in a macabre dance, the hoarse voice sang a warning: Be kind, Isabella! Jacquetta whispered: Bury me at midnight. The Titulus Regius unrolled, a redlipped serpent. Hate boiled and bubbled, while Morton, Margaret, Bray, the Stanleys, crowded round, kind, deferential, advising.

Detached she heard far away the grunts and oaths of the grooms, their axes chipping at the great thorns. Her own voice quavered silently. Have him killed, my lord. Bessy, how you do hate my lord of Warwick! Have Clarence beheaded, Edward! Bessy, look not upon those I love! Like a sad green bird, the slanted eyes of Mistress Grace flashed across memory’s path. Edward dead, and the funeral bell. Proud Cis, Richard’s old mother, black-clad with her jangling keys, her rosary. God keep you, Richard, through this night!

Let him be killed, let his death be inglorious.; For his insults to me and mine. It is done, Madame. It is done. Richard, where are my sons? The odd disappointment in his face. The stubborn refusal, lighting fresh fires. Where are my sons, your Grace? Madame, you forget yourself: We are your Majesty!’ It is done, Madame. It is done.

The path freed, the litter rolled on. Bradgate came into view. She leaned and looked, expecting vastness, soaring towers, a gleaming inland sea fringed by willow and rushes. She gasped. Bradgate was so small! Crumbling. The pleasaunce was untended and rooks occupied the tower, flying in and out with mournful cry. The lake was almost dry. It was shallow, clogged with mud and algae. As Dorset lifted her and carried her into the manor, she looked back wildly seeking the place where, naked, she had bathed in the moon, watching John touched by her own unearthliness. None would believe that night! It was, like herself, a thing of dreams.

Laying her head against Dorset’s shoulder, she said: ‘Tom, you are good. You shall be rewarded.’ With what? Ah yes. The long-awaited pension from Henry, lately bestowed. An ex-gratia payment of ‘all profits and issues of all lands, honours and castles lately belonging to Elizabeth’ … How generous! she thought wrily. The estates granted to her filled six rolls of parchment, their buying back was contained in one little line. She had signed the receipts under Morton’s wattled eye.

‘Only live,’ said Dorset. I am afraid.

Here was the Hall, where the Goliath tapestry had hung. The door, where the steward of the twisted arm had fallen back before the Fiend. The banister, where John’s two hounds had been unleashed and calmed by Warwick’s wizard hand. The stairs, passing swiftly under Dorset’s lightly burdened step. Here she had stood to witness John’s last returning. And now the bedchamber, where she had sobbed her last true tears, holding the baby Richard, surveyed by infant Tom. Tom, who now carried the ageing infant who had borne him.

He laid her down. ‘Rest a little while.’

A fresh pan had been hastily placed in the bed but it was still damp with unuse. The old faces and voices continued their dance. Little Ned, pale and overworked in his Ludlow schoolroom, Ned, the child come forth in Sanctuary, and the joy of fugitive Edward. Ned, who would have loved her, whom she would have loved, and did, too late. And his brother, young Richard of York – volatile, noisy, with his soldiers and his unfailing quest for mirth. How did they die?

I killed them. She twisted, shuddering. Her hands sprang like a snared rabbit and she caught at it with the other biting her lips till they bled, holding her twitching fingers down in a hurting grasp. I killed them. I among others put them to death by whispers, destroyed my sons through word of mouth. Away, odious serpent, contaminator of my noble race! Send me a saviour, Melusine. The Red Dragon flared; midway between heaven and hell, Reynold Bray spat on the Boar, looked up at her tower and laughed like a schoolboy. The souls of those I love, Melusine! and their bodies too! I killed them. Like the Greeks, who, to ensure victory, act it out beforehand, I wrote their doom in chapter and verse. I cleared the road for Tudor, Beaufort, Morton. And the man who kept my sons safe I had killed with ignominy.

There was torment in the bed. It was still light, the misty light of autumn. Bradgate will make me well again, she had told Tom. I could scream and tear my hair, as Morton once advised, but there would be none to mark it down for posterity. I could hurl myself from the window, but there would be no profit in it. Only a huddled sheath for bones, a triumph for Tudor, in whose side I must be one of the lesser thorns.

She sat up, tall. ‘I will live!’ she said.

She went stiffly downstairs and summoned lights for the Hall. Dorset sat white and worried beside her at the table. There was bravado in her fragile sway at the board, and the way she lifted her eyes to the roof, the arching walls, sureying the last bastion of her domain. By sheer force of will he sat serenely in Bradgate Hall, while wind got up outside and pried around the crumbling manor like a friendless ghost.

She arose early next morning and bade Dorset find a boat. Humouring her, he searched byre and barn and found a vessel scarcely worthy of water, yet one that floated, and had oars. She sat in the stern, while, knee-deep in mud, servants pushed off the rotting craft. Tom rowed and found deep water. He made towards the further bank where stunted willows grew. Anxiously he watched his mother.

‘You once fished in this lake, Tom.’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Do you remember your father?’

Green scum clung to the oars. She looked down into the mysterious depths, the source of might, the fluent vehicle of power. She sighed, and trailed her wasted hand where leaves floated and waterweed wove its net. She gave a sharp cry. The drowned face of a child, with staring eyes and open, pleading mouth, looked at her. She clutched at Dorset and nearly upset the boat.

‘Tis only a big carp,’ he said softly. ‘A dead fish, Madame.’

Other fish were attacking it. Smaller ones struck at the tail so that scales broke off, floating, silvering the clogged green surface of the water.

‘Let us go back,’ she said.

When they entered the Hall, a man was standing before the fire-place. A stranger, dark, fatigued, cap in hand. Richly dressed, and splashed with the mud of haste. He had the most eager eyes she had ever seen.

‘No,’ she said. It was evening; the servants had been dismissed. She, and Dorset, and the stranger, sat before the fire. The flames leaped, warm as the stranger’s eyes.

‘If you would only listen, your Grace.’

‘How did you know where to find me?’ He smiled, a kind weary smile.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘By now I should have learned that there are no secrets. More folk know Tom Fool than Tom Fool knows.’

‘Had I not thought you would listen,’ he said quietly, ‘I would not be here.’

‘You have made a mistake,’ she answered coldly. ‘I want no part of it.’ She looked in his eyes. They were fine eyes, rich brown, intensely gleaming.

‘I am too old,’ she spoke more patiently. ‘Too old for further conspiracies. I am no longer part of this world.’

‘We need your Grace’s support,’ he said.

‘I have told you. I have conspired in my time – why should I deny it? And it has brought me to desolation.’ She turned her head away; it shuddered slightly.

‘My mother has been ill,’ said Dorset.

Swiftly the stranger turned his attention on the Marquis.

‘Then you, my lord. Will you at least hear me?’

‘I have forfeited my sons’ lives,’ said Elizabeth from the chimney-corner. Her eyes were lambent and sad, strangely youthful in the firelight.

‘Not necessarily,’ said the stranger, and cracked a twig from the fire beneath his sollaret.

After a while she said: ‘Tell me.’

‘At least one of them escaped, Madame.’

Pityingly she looked at him. ‘Sir, I fear you are a fool, whoever you are. My sons are dead. Henry Tudor is thorough.’

‘Then why,’ said the stranger softly, ‘did he not order for them a Requiem Mass?’

Yes. Yes, she thought, he would have done it. He was so correct, especially in matters of ecclesiastical procedure. His ancestors’ holy disposition called for it. And the boys, being murdered, as the rumour ran, would need especial protection for their souls.

‘An amazing oversight,’ she said. The fire exploded, sending up a shower of sparks.

‘An oversight without precedent. An oversight beyond belief. Nay, Elizabeth–’ she looked up sharply – ‘Henry would not say Masses for the living. That is heresy.’ She sighed. She folded her suddenly quiet hands in her lap.

‘In Ireland there is a boy,’ he went on. ‘His looks are Plantagenet, and he is fair and comely. He comports himself like a prince. He has ten thousand followers. Margaret of Burgundy has promised to uphold him; to overthrow the Tudor. Lord Lincoln, who sits on Tudor’s Council, is with us too. But we need you, Madame. Your seal and your word are worth that of twenty thousand lesser souls.’

‘Which of my sons is it?’ she said very softly.

‘That, Madame, I do not know. It could be either. Again, it could be the young Earl of Warwick.’

‘Warwick is in the Tower!’

He shrugged. ‘So men say. The Tower has kept its secrets for centuries. It may be Warwick, it may not. Whoever it is, he will bring down the Tudor.’

She gazed into the fire so hard that the flames hurt her sight. Strange, that she might be called upon to uphold the Fiend’s grandson, Clarence’s son. Stranger still, that the Fiend was less abhorrent than Tudor, who had dealt her the most dreadful wound. Was it not fitting that she should support Warwick’s line in atonement? Atonement for what? For Gloucester’s bloody death; he who had loved Warwick and all his kin.

‘You say that Lincoln is with you?’

‘Yes. He is marshalling a great force, in secret.’

‘Lincoln was named King Richard’s heir. Does he not covet the crown for himself?’

‘He cannot have it, in face of your living son’s claim,’ said the stranger swiftly. ‘Not with the reversal of Titulus Regius Nor, in these circumstances, would King Richard have wished it.’

‘So the boy in Ireland is my son!’

‘Madame. I say only: there is a boy, a Plantagenet. Will you place your trust in him? Will you revenge yourself?’

‘Tudor duped me,’ she said slowly. ‘More thoroughly than any other. Yes, for that …’ She turned to Dorset. ‘Thomas?’ His cheeks were flushed with excitement.

‘Madam my mother,’ said he, ‘I fear and mistrust Tudor most heartily. I am for this enterprise.’

To the stranger she said: ‘What do you want of me?’ And turned her face against the firelight. For an instant her old beauty returned, magical and weird. She shimmered, she was fluid, never still.

‘Your support, your word; any monies you can spare. Bless you, your Grace.’ He knelt to kiss her hands.

‘And who are you?’ she said finally.

From his wallet he took a blazon worked in silver and clipped it to the edge of his collar; a dancing hound. ‘Behold my master!’

‘Sir Francis Lovell.’

He laughed, though his brown eyes were hard and keen. ‘Aye, Dickon’s ‘brave dog’!’

She remembered Lovell well; a youth laughing at her, or so she had imagined. How much evil had she imagined in the past?

‘Support us, Madame,’ he said again. ‘And we will hang Tudor’s bowels on Micklegate Bar!’

Looking at Dorset, she smiled sadly. ‘So be it,’ she said. ‘And I vowed I was done with conspiracy!’

Grace stood behind John, an arm about his neck as he sat in his chair. She watched him write, taking pleasure in the fine italic script, the broad underlinings, the swirling capitals. Each black flowing wave was like a cord binding her tightly to the writer. She felt as if the quill scratched on her own heart. With each dipping stroke of it she saw the sea. The margins on the page were gateways of freedom. The odd manner in which he crossed his ‘T’s’ was a little jest.

‘’Tis fair!’ She rubbed her face against his shining hair. ‘Who taught you to write?’

‘Ssh!’ he said, preoccupied. Then he kissed the fingers against his cheek. ‘There. It’s done. How long for its despatch, Master Ralph?’

The prentice was still on the bed, a flagon of wine in his hand. He came as often as he dared to the upper room. Sometimes he had a bruised face earned from Gould for shirking a duty. He was always merry these days; the sadness was gone from him as it was from John. It was a merriment verging on mania, none the less. During their brief conversations, the upper room trembled with hope and a deathly excitement. Old catchwords, the raisons of loyalty, sang in the air. Ralph would take no payment for his services, waving away John’s offered gold, although the prentice was threadbare.

‘Ralph, Ralph!’ John slewed on the chair to look at him, and laughed. ‘How long, I say? Tell me, and I’ll broach the other cask!’

The prentice sprang up. He was carelessly gay and had been toasting York and the dead King in an unnervingly loud voice.

‘No more wine, my lord.’ He walked springily to the window, and drank in a gulp of air. ‘As for your letter – my brother sails in a fortnight.’

John went to stand beside the prentice, laying an arm about his neck.

‘This is my third letter,’ he mused. ‘I have had only one reply from Desmond’s clerk.’

The prentice’s merriment faded. ‘Pirates took my brother’s ship the first time, I told you. Thank God it was only pirates! I was afraid … They had to run for it, almost down to Cork, and the couriers’ gear was washed overboard. But, my lord, your second bill received a warm reply.’

‘A very guarded reply,’ said John, and frowned.

‘Yes. Well …’

Ralph scratched his nose which was turned-up, and pink with wine.

‘Ralph?’

‘It’s too dangerous,’ muttered the prentice. ‘We must be careful.’

‘Don’t talk in riddles,’ said John sharply. ‘What have I done, or failed to do?’

The last trace of lightness dropped from Ralph and he looked steadily at John. ‘Lord, they need more assurance from you – proof of your genuine allegiance. In Ireland they are nervous – as elusive as ill-trained hawks. Who can blame them?’

‘Proof of my allegiance?’ said John coldly. ‘Have they forgotten whose son I am?’

Ralph nodded, said softly: ‘Assuredly not. But their plan is too great to risk any hazard, however slight. They must know that you are with them – to dethrone Tudor. They plan to crown the Boy in Christ Church, Dublin. Burgundy is with them, and they have a commander from Germany, a soldier like Samson – Martin Schwarz. So, my lord–’ steadily Ralph looked at John – ‘you will not be welcome in Ireland until you state your heart’s disposition. Too much hangs in the balance.’

John’s eyes were bright. ‘By St. Denis, Ralph! I had thought of Ireland as a place to hide my sore heart and be happy with my lady! But now! Now, there’s so much more – a chance to fight, to die, to live … Where’s the letter?’

He snatched up the drying parchment and tore it across. ‘Give me a quill. I’ll write it anew. I’ll be guarded no longer.’

He sat down again at the table. Grace and the prentice moved to stand beside him.

‘It’s danger,’ said Ralph. ‘But worth it, highness.’

‘Not highness, Ralph!’ said John, looking up, smiling. Grace watched him, and the smile on the arrogant, fiery face, thinking: I love him. I could die for love of him.

‘We are brothers in this, Ralph,’ he said. ‘Drink!’

Ralph took up the flagon, tipped a long swallow of wine down his throat. He gulped, said. ‘That was for the Boy! And this for Henry Tudor’s ruin!’ There was a long silence while he drained the flagon to the dregs. Grace stole closer to John, kissed his cheek, rubbed the smoothness of his jaw, whispered in his ear. He bore it for a moment, then pushed her away.

‘Sweet, my letter will be awry.’ Sulking, she went to the window and looked out.

‘Why, there’s Salazar!’ she cried, and waved madly. The gleaming face, wearing new jewelled ear-rings and a wide white laugh, looked up. He lifted the monkey’s paw and made it wave. A wind blew up, sudden and fierce and the monkey chattered in fear and clasped its master’s ears. The Moor smiled once more at Grace, passed down an alley and was gone from sight.

‘We have all manner of allies,’ Ralph was saying. ‘Even La Woodville is with us!’

Grace’s heart lurched, but she kept silent.

John was signing the letter. The sweeping quill made ‘J. Gloucester’ black and even and fair, with a wild flamboyant tail doubled and redoubled with a knot in the end.

‘Shall I take it now?’ said Ralph hesitantly.

‘Yes, yes. Take it. Keep it hidden until your brother sails.’ He stood up and embraced the prentice. ‘Ralph,’ he said softly. ‘You must come with us to Ireland.’

‘John,’ said the prentice. ‘I will be with you until your life’s end … Lord!’ He lurched suddenly as he turned to go ‘The wine is raging … I must go.’

‘God keep you,’ said John.

Ralph lurched again as he went out of the door. Grace thought him more than a little drunk. And he was still holding the letter. Alarmed, she ran to the top of the stairs, and was relieved to see him tuck the letter safely in the breast of his doublet. She returned to John, and to the amazement of both of them, burst into tears. He was with her at once, holding her. She clung to him so tightly that he gasped.

‘It is the waiting, sweet,’ he whispered, when her hold loosened. ‘Soon we shall be in Ireland. Not much longer, my heart.’

His words failed to bring comfort. Again she held him; she could only whimper and hold him. Like Salazar’s monkey, caught in a whirlwind. As mindless yet as sentient of doom.

It was spring again, and the tertian fever had Henry in its grip. He moved steadily through his court; he was flanked by the Yeomen wherever he went. His long face and deep eyes were tranquil and watchful and hid all evidence of his sickness. His body could shake in secret coughing but his spirit stepped high, and nowhere more than in the prince’s chamber. The court had returned to Westminster. Arthur was five months old, and not as sturdy as the King might wish. Nevertheless Henry could not keep from the child’s side, even with his own fever raging. For precaution he took to stuffing his own mouth and nostrils with powdered cinnamon; this gave him an unpleasant appearance. He leaned over the swaddled, grizzling infant and whispered in Welsh; whispered of Llewellyn, of Gladis, of Merfyn and Rhodri, of lowerth and Gruffydd, of lago and Cynan; of Noah. In the babe’s slit eyes Henry looked for the shades of destiny, the long glittering promise of the future. The homage of foreign lands waited there. One day a grand alliance should make Arthur’s England great. The infant sneezed. Henry turned to where Master William Petronus, the astrologer, wound in cabalistic robes, lurked reverently.

‘It’s Oxford’s fault!’ he said testily to the sage. ‘He kept my son waiting in the cold church for three hours at the christening. I should have punished him. I fear I grow over-merciful.’

By my faith, thought Master Petronus, it is more likely that you yourself have infected the child. Your obsession knows no bounds. And as to your mercy … Discreetly he said: ‘Sire, Parliament is gathering and awaits you. Before it meets there is something urgent…’

Reluctantly Henry straightened from the cradle and moved away. He passed through the chamber where a bevy of doctors and nurses did him homage. Among them was his mother, who scarcely left the child, except for visits to Bess, who was far from well with milk-fever and an ague.

‘Tell me, then,’ said Henry walking on. The court was beginning to fill with noise as the councillors arrived to pay their respects. It would be a heavy Parliament with one or two important faces missing, and he knew why. He knew everything; he could taste, smell, presage, gauge past, present and future. It was high time Master Petronus was retired.

‘This year,’ said the astrologer, ‘there will be attempts upon your Majesty’s life.’

Henry nodded. He had faith in the man after all. He had forecast the deaths of Edward and Richard Plantagenet correctly. But the King had more faith in himself. Trust none.

‘Your Majesty,’ said Petronus, hurrying to keep up with Henry’s shambling strides.

‘Let none know your mind.’

‘Yes,’ said Henry.

‘Let them think they know your mind,’ said the astrologer helpfully.

Henry flashed him a long, shrewd smile. ‘There is a proverb, Master: “Who knows not how to dissemble knows not how to reign.” Does that match your mood, Master Petronus?’

Defeated, the astrologer bowed and withdrew. Henry went on through brass-bound doors flung wide for his coming, to where Morton and Sir Reynold Bray, his new knighthood sleek upon him, waited. Together they went into Henry’s privy chamber. On the walls the Dragon ramped upon his emerald ground.

‘You look weary, my lord Cardinal,’ said Henry cheerfully. He sat down and blew his nose. A cloud of cinnamon dust soaked his kerchief. ‘Your news, now. Already my lord astrologer has wearied me with stale warnings.’

‘My news is fresh and warm, Sire.’ Morton turned to Bray, who carried the customary sheaf of documents, one of which the Cardinal Archbishop extracted with a bone-like slither of parchment.

‘Is this the list of names?’ said the King.

‘It is, Sire. Lincoln is the most prominent of the rebels; he grew weary of waiting …’

‘I was right,’ said Henry without expression. ‘Time, my lord. Time levels all, reveals all.’

‘Truth is the daughter.of time,’ observed Bray, and, catching the King’s eye, wished he had not spoken.

Morton said: ‘Lovell is near Oxford and has charge of one wing of the rebels. Schwarz is their captain. I was surprised at their great number.’

‘The patron of York is St. Jude,’ said Henry. ‘The lost cause saint!’

Morton, taking another roll, said: ‘And here is the news from Ireland. The boy’s name is Lambert Simnel. He is a blacksmith’s son.’

Henry said, intrigued: ‘How are you sure?’

Bray and Morton exchanged glances. ‘The priest we captured – he was the one who schooled Simnel. He sang us a whole psalter …

Henry looked quickly up at the Dragon banners. That puissance, that red might calmed him, took the sting from Morton’s next sickening words. ‘We racked the priest, Sire. The rack is a good invention. Upon it, men have the gift of tongues!’

‘Go on,’ Henry waved his hand. ‘So, they will crown the feigned boy. Jesu! the Irish are madmen. They will crown monkeys next!’

‘Speaking of crowns,’ said Morton suddenly, ‘for policy’s sake we must arrange the Queen’s coronation. More and more I hear dissent in London. She is much beloved, your Majesty.’

‘And am I not?’ The deep eyes raked Morton’s face. ‘She will be crowned,’ said Henry. ‘When we have finished with Lincoln, Lovell, Lambert Simnel. London shall have their Queen. But first, I will have peace in England! I will have it, and maintain it!’ He struck the arm of his chair, startling Morton and Bray with uncharacteristic passion. ‘I will have a realm that my son can rule with the grace of Uther Pendragon, of Llewellyn the Great. I will have money in my coffers and the adoration of the world. To the ends of the earth my kingdom shall endure. I will it! It shall be so!’

‘Amen,’ said Morton softly.

‘Well, then,’ said Henry, still strangely violent, ‘read me the conspirators. Nay, I’ll read them myself.’ He stretched out his hand. ‘The lesser fish first – which came within our net this day?’

There was a pounding on the door, the strident clash of a Yeoman’s pike. Henry called: ‘Enter!’ and a youth came in, and fell in homage. Reynold Bray strode over, raised the prone figure and wagged an admonishing finger.

‘You should have waited.’

‘Let him come,’ said Henry. ‘Is that for us?’ He pointed to a slender package clutched in the youth’s hand. Wordlessly it was tendered, and the prone position resumed. Under a dusty ray of sun and the red and green banners, Henry opened and read, from a slim sheaf of writing. He smiled, looked up and to the youth said: ‘Come here.’

Conscious of his need for a change of clothes, for he was still greasy from the shop, Master Ralph moved upwards and forward. His face felt bruised; he wished that Gould had acted out his part with less pith. He stared at the, King, felt Bray behind him with a finger in his ribs to make him stand up straight.

‘You have done well,’ said the King. ‘We shall not forget.’ He looked down at the letters again, and the faint smile pulled at his mouth.

‘Why does he cross his ‘t’s’ this way?’ he said.

After a moment Morton said: ‘Shall he be arrested now, Sire?’ and Henry shook his head. ‘Nay!’ he said loudly. ‘I will make him a gift – a gift of time. Am I not merciful?’ A look almost of regret crossed his face as he tapped the sheaf of letters. ‘With these, he has built his scaffold, woven the hemp. Now let him sharpen the knife.’ To Ralph he said: ‘Dismiss!’ as if he spoke to the Yeoman. He did not look at the prentice again. The smell of betrayal hung heavily. Great God! he thought. He must have loved John of Gloucester closely to have these weapons placed within his hand. Jesu preserve me from such men.

‘Next,’ he said, holding out fingers that trembled slightly. The boom of courtiers’ voices sounded outside the chamber. Parliament would soon be in session. ‘Swift, now. Let us be done.’

‘A fish, Sire,’ said Morton, passing the King another deposition. ‘A big and a strange fish.’

Henry read, half-hearing Morton’s explanation of how his agents had gone to work; pure chance, Sire. No betrayals here, only a whisper near Oxford, a courier drunk with weariness, a sealed letter mislaid, a horse recognized. Pure chance. Good fortune for one; ill for the other. But what ingratitude on the subject’s part! What arrant folly!

‘Sweet Christ!’ said Henry, looking up. ‘Why …’

Why am I surprised? he thought. It makes me afraid that I should be surprised. Carefully, and swiftly, make an end of it now. Speeches prepared, and a different reason for disaffection stated. Tracks covered, like the burning of Titulus Regius; might enforced like the predating of our victory. Have done, Elizabeth. Drown, witch.

He stood up. ‘Ride to Bradgate,’ he ordered Bray. ‘And take armed men. The Queen-Dowager’s time is done.’

There was a little knot of people standing outside the Council chamber; among them Margaret Beaufort, who had promised herself that one day she would invade the sanctum of men and have herself a voice; and Maud Herbert, who had not been long enough at court to keep her opinions secret. When Maud saw the Yeomen coming with Elizabeth, she gasped. The men were tall and ungentle; they were half-dragging the Queen-Dowager. Once she slipped and struck her side against a pillar. Maud heard her cry of pain.

‘Madame!’ She turned, shocked, to the Countess. ‘She is the Queen’s mother, after all!’

‘She is but the Mare,’ said Margaret, her eyes like black enamel. ‘And her usefulness is outworn.’

Maud closed her lips and looked back at the little company approaching. Behind Elizabeth stumbled Dorset, His hands were manacled and he had a bloody ear. Much to everyone’s surprise, he had fought like a tiger when apprehended at Bradgate. Now, he wept, drily, hopelessly. They waited a little while in the corridor until summoned to the Council chamber. Elizabeth’s face was yellow, her eyes were glazed. Her headdress had slipped askew and revealed hair lily-white and thin in patches, like melting snow on mottled earth. The silver girl who had ensnared princes was dead. Even the palsy was quiescent; her hand hung still, her head, slightly bent to the side, was like the head of a corpse.

Soon they were admitted, Dorset writhing as if he feared the chamber were some dreadful oubliette to plunge them summarily into oblivion. The chamber itself was not large and was made smaller by the great assembly of lords and prelates seated on either side of the long table. Elizabeth stood, swaying a little, facing the King. Her eyes rushed forward to encompass him: his face, the face of unknown significance now plain to her; the delicate face touched by a frailty which in itself was strength; the supernormal aura of wisdom, the awful knowledge surrounding it. It was all there, as she had recalled it in some unrealized, uninterpreted dream. In that moment she was a part of him, and he of her.

He stood leaning against a high gold chair. He was wearing a violet gown lined with cloth-of-gold; a collar of many jewels. On his head lay a dark velvet cap pinned by a large diamond and a priceless pearl. An unassailable power poured from him and was manifest above, in the banners, in the fiery tongue and claws of the Dragon. His long, deeply hooded eyes were bleak and ageless, and visions chased across them in her sight. In the little space before he spoke she remembered vague, irrelevant things … the Jerusalem Tapestry, and Jacquetta’s greedy laughter at sight of it. She heard sounds she had never heard, saw sights she had never seen; through the wizard glass of Henry’s eyes, Desmond’s boys screamed and pleaded vainly for their lives; Edward wept and Warwick died; Gloucester’s head was broken upon Bow Bridge. Her own sons called upon her and God. Their voices were stilled, and merged into Morton’s, reading the indictment. Thomas was committed first: ‘… Marquis of Dorset, for your treason against his most sovereign Majesty to be confined during the King’s pleasure in the Tower of London …’

She came from her glassy trance and looked at Dorset’s white face. Swift tears rushed into her eyes. My son. My first born son. Tom, the boy conceived in far, lost love; John’s son, condemned, committed. Helplessly she stretched her arms out towards him. He tried to smile and she saw that he was grievously afraid. The heavy door closed sternly. Her tears receded; she stood, glacial and still, fighting this new loss, sudden nausea, pain.

Her own arraignment was begun; a long farrago. Treason of course; but what treason? She waited vainly to hear the name of Lovell, or of Lincoln.

‘That you, Elizabeth, did so displease his Majesty the King by aligning your loyalty with that of the traitor Plantagenet, Richard of Gloucester, the rebel and usurper. That you did place your daughters under his protection, to the great anger of our sovereign lord.’

She frowned, and made a little uncertain gesture. She said: ‘Forgive me, my lords. I do not understand. That was all … a long time ago.’

Henry waited. There was silence. Then she understood.

‘The charge is false,’ she said. ‘I have displeased your Majesty, and I am glad of it!’ Her chin was up, as high as she had ever carried it; there was within her a last surging flicker of strength. ‘I have displeased your Majesty,’ she said again, ‘because you would not give me my sons. I sought to uphold one of my still living sons!’

There was a sharp silence, only momentary, but one which seemed to go on for hours. The King looked towards Morton. An early bumblebee tapped gaily at the window

‘Your sons are dead, Madame,’ said the Cardinal Archbishop. He looked at the window, and the bee, as if he were reciting a psalm with half his mind upon it. ‘The traitor Plantagenet had them smothered in the Tower.’

‘Sire,’ said Elizabeth.

‘Be still, Madame.’ Jasper Tudor’s voice; strangely quiet, mingled with the tapping of the bee. ‘Be still and hear your sentence.’

‘Am I to die?’ she said. She looked down the polished length of the table, and up into Henry’s eyes. Death. It had a stark and beautiful sound. Sir John Grey, knight, is dead.

‘You are to be confined for life,’ someone said, but she had ceased to listen. Her eyes were fixed on Henry’s in fascination. Their glances merged as if welded. They drowned in one another’s fluent steel, each seeing pitilessness, fear, and the dread of lost power. In the glitter of his sumptuous jewels she saw her own old insecurities, the lusts and longings, the spitting in the eye of God and Fortune; the fate formed by the writhing forces, one stronger than the other. Melusine – Cadwallader. Melusine had folded her coils and gone, sleeping for another thousand years at the bottom of her lake. Only her fading shadow remained in Henry’s eyes. Elizabeth looked, and saw herself.

Bermondsey, they said. The Abbey of St. Saviour, and none to communicate with her on pain of severe reprisal.

Bermondsey, they said. There you will live and die.

She looked at him once more before leaving. It was as if she had borne him, had nurtured and moulded his wit and will until they were the facsimile of her own.

As you wax, Henry, so must I wane.

The November sky was coloured like iron, and the river cloaked by mist. All along the Thames lay tall carracks, weighted with Eastern spice, velvet and perfumes from Genoa, vessels carrying gold and silver from Venice, falcons from Iceland. Outgoing craft shivered at their moorings; the high-masted ships bound for Flanders, with decks hidden beneath sarplers of wool, hemp and flax that gave out a pungent smell over the low-tide stench of the fog. The masts seemed to reach the heavy sky, and from each rode a pennon, clinging twisted about the spidery shrouds. Grace raised her eyes to them, and prayed that they should blow, and carry her and John with them. The eel-boats lay in harbour. Usually there was a crowd of wives eager to board them, but this day the quay was silent. The City had gone to Westminster. Grace looked at the towering, webbed mastheads, about which sad seabirds made their dance. November was a bad month for sailing, yet sail they must; she, and the unknown ships, and John, whose heart was sick again.

When Ralph had brought the news of Lincoln’s defeat at Stoke, John had cried out in anguish: Plantagenet dies again! She had felt herself lacking in the words and actions to heal him. She could only hold him, pressing her valueless body to his, watching his new-found health fade from him. He was wild of nights, springing up to cry of battles unfought, bloody deeds only dreamed of, vengeance unwreaked. Frustration rode him, and he grew incautious, speaking loudly of the Yorkist cause to strangers who, cursing him, turned away for their own safety. She saw bitterness where there had been hope, stress in place of calm, and finally this silent apathy which accompanied him upon his walk by the river. In this limbo of distress she led him, trying to divert him, pointing out the beauty of the lacy carved ships with their sails asleep, and the envied seabirds, who darted and screamed about them. Near the Steelyard she stopped and put her arms about him. By now she knew that she was called a harlot in the City; it was of no matter. She took him in her arms and he did not resist.

‘My dear love,’ she said, ‘when shall we take ship for Ireland?’

His eyes were dull. ‘Ireland?’

‘From Bristol?’ she said gently. ‘Great ships go from there, John. They search for the isle of Brasil.’

Salazar had told her this, in their daily conversations, and he had laughed to see her eyes wide from his talk of sea monsters. Now she chattered to John about it, while he leaned on her like a tired tree; he, who was always so strong and passionate, now bereft and slack. The failed rebellion had taken away a part of him. Grace longed for escape – forgetting. Her own longings as well as his; Elizabeth still tugged at her. As if Elizabeth were the bell and Grace the tongue; where Elizabeth swayed, Grace sounded and was bruised. She knew that Elizabeth had been arrested, and daily, secretly, she remembered her in her prayers.

‘The Boy!’ said John, for, the hundredth time. ‘He was only a blacksmith’s son. Tudor has put him to work in the kitchens. It would have been better had he hanged him.’

‘Yes, John,’ said Grace, as always. ‘He was only a feigned boy. He was not the Earl of Warwick, nor was he one of my father’s sons.’

Henry had fetched the true Warwick out of the Tower and had paraded him briefly, slug-pale and mindless from incarceration. Although Clarence’s son could hardly tell night from day, the point was taken. Simnel was Simnel, and now washed pots for the King’s pleasure.

‘John,’ she said, ‘we are ready for the journey.’

Hopeless yet hoping, she had made sure of this. All the bags packed, the green gowns chested in that lonely upper room. Yet all John could talk of was Lincoln, utterly defeated at Stoke and bloodily dead, and the rising shattered by Tudor’s waged men. On London Bridge the rebel heads, stripped by kites, had mouldered weeks ago. More and more Grace longed to leave England. It was nearly six months since Stoke, and she and John still lived untouched, above the butcher’s shop. The only change had been Master Ralph’s dismissal – for laziness.

‘My love.’ She laid her face against his smooth velvet shoulder. She glanced up at his eyes, now listlessly fixed upon the tall ships and the dozen barges that suddenly appeared around the curve of the river. Painted barges, gilt banners shuddering limply in the thickening fog.

‘Where are they all going?’ he asked; apart from the world, no longer a lover but a child, young yet immeasurably old, careworn and drained.

‘To the coronation. Bess is to be crowned today.’

This affected him; he showed life, his lips curled. ‘The time is full, God knows!’ he said scornfully. ‘The usurper would have held off another ten years, had not London cried shame … I love Bess, she is Edward’s daughter. Although she is the witch’s daughter, too.’ He looked at Grace with a tinge of the old hatred. Sadness caught at her heart.

‘My lord.’ Only a sigh, drifting with the rotting November fog.

‘The witch!’ he said, cruelly. ‘More good men died through her this year. Do not forget that she conspired in the rebellion too. Ralph said …’

‘Unfair!’ cried Grace. ‘You too would have fought! Did you not write to Ireland, offering your arms? Elizabeth joined your cause …’ She stopped, knowing that whatever Elizabeth did, she could never redeem herself with John. Then she said softly: ‘Love, don’t miscall her. I can’t bear it.’

He looked at her, his woman, in whom he slaked needs, passions, rages. She was the moon to his tides, and still she could not realize it. He lifted her chin and gave her a token she could understand; a hard kiss on her pale mouth. She smiled wanly.

‘We have been fortunate,’ he said.

Yes. John was as guilty as any of the fleshless rebel heads on London Bridge had been. This renewed her itch of unease. She stared at him, willing his whole attention on her words.

‘We must leave England,’ she said.

She would carry the bags, arrange for pack-mules to Bristol, or Pembroke, or wherever was necessary. She would take him bodily aboard some rough Irish vessel. In her mind she saw the shore slide away, heard the seabirds shrieking of hope, of peace. Desmond’s family would welcome them, cordial and careful, like their last letter. Still John did not answer and a fearful thought occurred: did he court death? As his father had done on Bosworth Field? Men said that Richard cared nothing for life that day, went roaring and singing to his end. Men said many things, and daily the tenor of opinion changed. A great gold boat passed along the river to Westminster; it carried the flaccid banners of the Earl of Pembroke. Jasper Tudor, newly made Earl of Bedford, but keeping his old colours. Pembroke! Yes, Bristol was the safer for her and John to slip from the country. Her unease grew like the fog, and John felt it. He knew it, and suddenly he was back with her, he was the John she knew and loved, and she was once more passive, clinging, guided. His cold fingers crept about her own icy hand. A gang of prentices hastened past, best-dressed, to Westminster, where they would gape and howl and drink too deeply of the Queen’s health.

John touched her face, set his lips to the damp curl beneath her hood.

‘All my fault,’ he said. ‘You’re sad. When you are sad, my Grace, I want to die.’

I want to die. The words entered her heart; every vein felt squeezed up tight. She stood on the fog-filmed cobbles and longed for a high-masted galley. She would steer it herself in fancy, over the black ocean, into the slack green harbour of Ireland.

‘There can be other risings, and you will join them,’ she said softly. The mist had a weird effect, as if the gap between them were widening. As if he were slipping away, hold him as she would. And like a soothsayer, he answered her:

‘There will be other feigned boys. And none will restore my father’s name. Men have cast him into Hell. Yet I know that he drinks of the water of life.’

Closely they began to walk, as if their steps were driven by a lifeless wind. And he began to talk to her, not of war or policy, but as he had rarely talked; of how he loved her, that she was his life’s light and salvation, and that without her he was dead and damned. The fog about them became warm, a sheltering balm, the cobbles satin beneath their feet. They joined the crowd hastening towards Westminster, yet they were apart from the people. Dreaming, they went slowly, while merchant and friar, peasant and ale-wife scampered by; while carts and chariots flying bright liveries forced them into doorway and alcove. Pliantly the two of them bent before the onrush of traffic, untouched, invulnerable. They filtered through the pulsing vein of London, his arm about her waist, her head in the hollow of his neck. Baynard’s Castle fell behind. There was neither hope nor need of entering the garden with its sweet early memories; the flowers bloomed in the clasp of his hands, her breath on his cheek. As Westminster towers rose before them, in stern yet ethereal greyness, he stopped, touched her mouth with his in the sight of festive London.

‘My little maid!’ he said, and smiled, a smile to live and die upon. And she babbled again of Ireland and escape; any thing, to keep that smile inviolate, and hers.

‘We must leave. Today.’

‘Hush!’ he said. ‘Let us go and see Bess’s coronation – let us say a prayer for her as she enters the Abbey.’

There was an immense crowd outside, yet folk let them through as if they were ghosts, and they stood at the forefront of the throng, close to the Abbey’s entrance. Covering the flags outside was a great carpet, striped in white and red whereon the Queen would walk under a golden canopy. The carpet’s shimmering breadth divided the holiday crowd. People pushed forward, heads turning, craning. Wives and merchants, prentices, clerks and schoolboys lined the carpet’s edge; and were controlled by armed men; pikemen and swordsmen wearing the Tudor tabard. Beside Grace a pretty young woman held the hand of a small boy. She drew a long dagger from her belt and gave it to the child.

‘Now wait, Robin,’ she told him. ‘Wait until the Queen has passed, and then go to!’

The little boy smiled up at Grace. ‘I am to cut the carpet,’ he confided.

‘I promised him,’ explained the woman. ‘But I fear the knife isn’t sharp enough!’

All down the line folk were discreetly unsheathing daggers for the timeless privilege of taking a square of the royal cloth, for good luck, as a protection against king’s evil, and in sheer joy and reverence.

‘I cut the carpet at Queen Anne’s coronation,’ said the young woman softly. ‘But then she and Richard were crowned together.’ John’s cold hand tightened on Grace’s; nearer the flaring bray of trumpets sounded and suddenly out of the hanging mist came the procession. A great cheer arose, caps sailed into the air. An ancient man burst into tears, crying: ‘Bess! Jesu preserve you, Bess!’ Slowly, gently, the Queen began the long walk up to the Abbey door. Her sister Cicely bore her train. Bess wore a kirtle of purple velvet banded with ermine. Her shining wheaten hair, crowned with pearls and rubies, fell to her hips and rippled as she walked. Her face was pale and thin and serious. Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth’s daughter, silver and gold, she came graciously on; the mob erupted with delight. The pure profile, the glittering hair passed by, gone in an instant. Bright-eyed, the small boy turned to his mother.

‘Now!’ she whispered, and he ran forward, waving his dagger. Likewise did a hundred men and women, knives gleaming like fishes slipping through the mist. And the guard moved, too swiftly. The majority of them were Breton; they had never heard of the custom and were desperately afraid of their master’s wrath. They did not see the joy or the innocence of the crowd; they saw only knives and sudden movements. Unsheathing their weapons, they laid about them. The cheers, the laughter, turned to screams of anguish. Grace saw an old man clubbed, his delicate skull shattered; a woman trampled. There was the sound of splintering bone, and one rending shriek that rose above all other. The small boy, Robin, was impaled on a guardsman’s lance. Within a minute a dozen people lay dying, and the beautiful carpet was more red than white.

At the Abbey’s portal, the Queen turned and saw all. Cicely dropped her sister’s train and buried her face in her hands. All the Queen’s ladies were crying; Jasper Tudor rushed them into the porch. Grace watched the Queen go weeping from dead bodies to her coronation. Her own mind froze; she slid fainting into John’s arms.

She found herself lying on a tavern bench. John’s face was fogged and strange. He had been trying to dribble wine into her mouth; the bosom of her gown was soaked. She could hear the landlord cursing softly in the background.

‘Be still, my love,’ John said. She tried to smile; her face was stiff.

‘You were right!’ he said. She frowned. Objects came clearer, then blurred again as, remembering the massacre, she began to weep. ‘We must go away,’ he went on. ‘After today, I have had enough of Tudor’s England. We will leave at once.’

She sat up; her head spun, then quietened slowly. She nodded and rose, wiped away tears. ‘I’m ready.’

‘I must find horses and a boy to bear our goods,’ he said. He crossed to the landlord and spoke swiftly; the man: nodded and went away. ‘Then, a ship to carry us. Wait here for me.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I’ll come with you, don’t leave me.’

Seriously he looked at her. He said: ‘Never.’

‘Let us not return to Gould’s. Let’s leave everything. I have all that I need.’

‘You must take your pretty gowns,’ he said, smiling: ‘I shall have no more money once we are exiled. I shall need to attach myself to some Irish lord … come, love. I love you in your pretty gowns.’

When they returned to the butcher’s shop, Gould was there alone. He looked at them dourly. When John, stiffly arrogant, informed him that they were quitting the lodging, he only grunted, and began sawing at a haunch of venison on the counter. Hand in hand they went upstairs and entered the small room for the last time. Together they leaned from the window once more. Salazar stood on the corner, teaching his monkey a trick; he was absorbed and did not look up. John touched the dingy walls of the room, the crooked table, found a forgotten doublet in a chest. Everything was very quiet; Gould’s sawing and chopping had ceased. John sat on the viciously lumpy bed, and stroked its covers.

‘Sweet Jesu! I was happy here!’ he said softly. Then, without looking at her: ‘My lady. Such as you are given by God.’

Tears stung her eyes. She said shakily: ‘We shall be even happier. Look!’ Trying to laugh, she nudged the coffer containing her gowns. ‘I can’t lift it!’

‘The boy will be here soon,’ he said. He sat quietly, turning the ring upon his finger, looking at the floor. Restlessly Grace walked about. Paul’s clock struck its harsh remembered note. She turned and looked at John as he sat there, all darkness and light, with his pallor and his black hair, and the sad tempestuous eyes pensively veiled. Love filled her as she looked.

‘Oh, my lord!’ she began. There was a noise on the stair, steps forcefully, imperatively advancing. No baggage-boy owned such a tread, or wore mailed shoes, or carried halberds that slithered and struck upon the walls of the narrow staircase. There were at least four, faceless ones, ascending the stair. The small upper room shook. John stood up, crossed easily, deliberately, to where she stood aghast, and drew her to him, covering her face with kisses. He set his mouth on hers in an endless embrace, bending her body to his, almost engulfing it, protectively yet with desire, the wild regretful desire of the condemned.

A weapon crashed once upon the door. Still he kissed her, held her as if to merge her body finally and forever with his. Half-fainting again, she cried in her mind: He knew! He knew they would come for him; he knew and did nothing …

Then they were in the room; the bright Dragon blazons and the royal insignia; tall men, stooping beneath the lintel, disinterested men come by order of their sovereign. And behind them was Gould, peeping gloomily to see his work accomplished.

‘You are John of Gloucester, son of the traitor Plantagenet.’

He had withdrawn from Grace, and was standing respectfully apart. He was smiling.

‘I am the son of Richard, rightful king of England.’

‘You must come now,’ they said, sounding foolish.

‘The lady has no part of it, of course,’ said John. Still he smiled. They inclined their heads, and accepted this. They had their orders; Grace was invisible.

‘The charge is treason?’

‘Treasonable correspondence with Ireland.’ The pikes were hefted and set to attention with a crash.

‘Why did he wait so long?’ said John softly.

‘Come,’ they said. The question was irrelevant; one did not question divinity.

Formally John kissed Grace’s hand. ‘Remember me,’ he said. His eyes smiled as well as his mouth; he was full of tenderness. He was slipping away; the fog of destiny had him. He was gone. Strangely, he said: ‘My dynasty is damned. The wheel comes full circle. My lady, my love. Remember …’

Even when the door had closed and the footsteps had died, she could not move. She stood like a stone, gathering strength against the storm about to break in her. When it did, his smile remained, almost but not quite enough to make the moment bearable.

Although Cardinal Morton now had palaces and mortmains the length of England, he found it sometimes convenient to lodge at his old manor of Holborn. There, in the quiet rooms or the pretty garden with its strawberry beds, he could nod acquaintance to harder times. He sat in his parlour, while a serious-faced boy of nearly nine stood reading from a scroll on a lectern. Morton listened to the fluid Latin cadences approvingly. Thomas More, son of a Lincoln’s Inn judge, was the wittiest pupil ever to come the Cardinal’s way. The clear voice relaxed Morton; he was feeling his great age. There was still so much to do; to shape the Tudor dream, to instruct what should be remembered and what forgotten. He was annoyed when his clerk and gatekeeper knocked, entered, and knelt to whisper against the folds of the scarlet robe.

‘Oh, this is monstrous!’ cried Morton.’ ‘It is not fitting for women to enter these precincts. Send her away.’

Thomas More slipped from the lectern stool and left the room. He disliked to hear his master in choler, even though this occurred infrequently.

‘Eminence,’ faltered the clerk. ‘Every day for weeks, she has embarrassed us.’ He flushed. When Grace wept, he did not know what to say; when she swooned, he was utterly put out, and let her lie moaning.

‘She speaks of going to his Majesty.’

‘Foolishness,’ said Morton quietly. ‘Very well. I will see her. No doubt she wishes to confess her sin. Are there no lesser men to give her an ear?’

He let her wait some minutes more while he occupied himself with the latest problem; the entry in York Civic Records, only lately brought to his notice. It was an old entry, dated 22nd August, two years earlier. He was slightly troubled by it. ‘This day was our good King Richard, late mercifully reigning over us, piteously slain and murdered to the great heaviness of this City.’ It was full time to stop such rot as this. And the herald, Rous, was due for an audience too; the Rous Roll must be amended for it too spoke glowingly of Henry’s predecessor. How should it be re-written? And now he was plagued by the bastard wench of Edward Plantagenet. He looked sternly at her when she was admitted. She did him obeisance.

‘Rise, child,’ he said impassively. Her lips left the great jewel on his finger and she got up. Her eyes were green a glass, contained a thousand years of sorrow, and discomfited him a little.

‘You are penitent?’

‘Penitent?’ An incredulous breath.

‘For your carnality during the past year with the traitor Gloucester. Remember the words of St. Jerome: God can do all things but restore virginity!’

She smiled a little. ‘Your Eminence,’ she said, ‘I come to you because you are of God. I wish to plead for John of Gloucester’s life.’

‘You are too late,’ he said stiffly. ‘He has been tried and found guilty. He is sentenced to death.’

Something shifted in the green eyes. Fleetingly he saw how she would be as an old woman; a stranger to smiles, still fair, but almost nunly. Somehow this made him feel older still.

‘I shall appeal to the King himself,’ she said quietly. Then he thought; she is mad, a heretic.

‘The King is not in London. The King sees no one.’ He picked up a quill, made a notation on Rous’s offending roll.

After a time she said: ‘When is the execution to be?’ and he told her, not looking up. When he raised his eyes, the room was empty. He sent again for Thomas More.

‘Divert me, Tom,’ he said. ‘I am weary.’

‘Alas, my lord.’ The boy blushed. ‘I have no talent for it.’

‘Nonsense.’ The fresh young mind was geared to storytelling, and untouched by the past thirty years of war. All More’s schooling had been directed by the accession of King Henry, the mystical union of Rose Red and White, like Christ and the Church. Brightly the boy said: ‘There is a new troupe of entertainers outside. They will do better than I.’

‘While he waited, Morton worried about the herald Rous’s roll. Such as he should be interrogated, sounded out. God knew how many little clerks there were, scratching the dangerous truth in hidden corners, fancying themselves chroniclers. Morton’s task was to achieve an ellipse, woven of thoughts, images, histories. Impossible to close the mouth of every secret scribe. Better to open them wider with a new tale. But how to bring the pattern to its full? So far the story was good – the shedding of infants’ blood – Black Will Slaughter was a fine invention, worthy of Chaucer’s genius … Yet there were too many who remembered Richard – the York epitaph exemplified this. Men lived longer these days, he thought, and despite all, found comfort in it.

The players entered and there was a most hideous hunchback among them. Clever, he told rhymes with tongue-torturing skill. He danced a little hornpipe. Yet freakish chance had loaded his body with a clubbed mass of bone; his arms were longer than his legs. Black flowing hair grew on his face.

‘Holy Jesu,’ murmured Morton, in wondering distaste, but he applauded the monster’s antics graciously. Then, suddenly, watching how, during a rest, the other entertainers ignored their wretched companion, illumination bloomed in the Cardinal’s mind. He called the hunchback over to the throne.

‘Why do they use you thus?’

The dwarf grinned. ‘Why, highness, behold!’ He bent double so that the misshapen hump moved beneath Morton’s eye. ‘I am touched by Lucifer – so men say!’

‘And are you?’ Morton’s heresy-sniffing nose dilated.

The hunchback raised clear eyes, his only beautiful feature. ‘No, lord,’ he said quietly.

Morton gave the dwarf a broad gold piece on parting. Now he knew how Rous should amend his Roll. He knew exactly.

‘Touched by Lucifer,’ he whispered, charmed. ‘Aye. Touched by Lucifer.’

Salazar was waiting for Grace when she came out of the Holborn mansion. He held two Arabian horses. Grace went and rested her head upon the Moor’s motleyed breast.

‘It is today,’ she said softly. ‘At noon.’

The monkey sprang to her shoulder. The Moor was crooning, a little hypnotic song stirred by the waves of an alien sea. He laid one long black hand upon Grace’s shivering head.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Upon Tower Hill. You must not go there.’

‘I must.’

‘It will bring you pain.’ Tenderly he looked down at her, so fair and small against his own dark mystery. She was his bright token, his proxy daughter, his special charm, and he, for months, her unknown amulet and guard.

‘You must not go,’ he repeated. ‘Look at the people!’

They were already hurrying through Holborn, dragging on gowns, eager for the dreadful joy, not far removed from love, of witnessing an execution. The apple-sellers were trundling their wagons through the City. The Londoners, the artisans, mercers, clerks and prentices, always the prentices, ran to watch, to feel their own necks secure and take comfort in vicarious death. John’s execution would propitiate each man’s especial god.

Salazar said, in his dreaming voice: ‘I went yesterday to the Tower.’

Broken, she said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you not take me?’

The stroking hand ruffled her hair, leaf-light. He thought of how he had found her, sitting mutely in the upper room without food or drink for three days; how he had carried her out through the stinking shop. How he had nursed her at his house, listening to her ravings, fed and restored her, talked softly through her anguish while she clung to his hand as her one anchor. He knew all her joys, her loyalties and griefs.

‘Did you see him?’ she whispered.

‘Nay, not I. None could. But he sent you this.’ He withdrew from his gold-laced pouch a tiny parchment scrap. She read from it, weeping.

‘My dear beloved, stay from me now. Remember that you are Plantagenet, accursed by the witch. Guard yourself. Sweet Christ Jesu send you happy. Written at the Tower by my own hand.’

His hand, the hand of delight, whose writings, like black sea-waves, bound her closer and closer, to what? A twitching body, a lifeless, severed head. She would go to Tower Hill. With fortune, the axe might also find her neck.

‘Come, Salazar, let us follow the people!’

He nodded, lifted her on to one of the horses, where she sat, swaying, her head shrouded by mist, her outline blurred. Taking the other mount’s bridle, the Moor began to walk. A tavern bush, threaded with dried flowers and ribbon, loomed to the left. He looked at Grace; he was with her in this last tribulation; he knew what he must do.

‘It is only eleven,’ he said. ‘A drink, first. A void, to warn you.’

He took her down, wrapped his long arm about her and guided her into the deserted inn. He pressed her down into a high-backed settle. She leaned her cheek against the wood. It smelled of cinnamon and musk, a scent lately left by some wealthy wife. Its smell was the smell of grief, its black oak the colour of death. There was a little knot in the grain, and into this she ground her cheek until the bruise broke and blood started. Good. Good pain.

Salazar stood before her, his vastness blotting out the little window over her head. He held a silver cup. It smoked and was aromatic. Her hands steadied about its warmth. She tasted the cup; an unfamiliar taste, it was writhing-sour, like swallowing a serpent.

‘Drink,’ said Salazar sweetly. The monkey chattered and hung upside down from the back of the booth.

‘Drink, doña.’

Salazar, tall, and wavering like a tree under storm, stood before her. Her head felt heavy, her eyes pained from the quivering colours of his dress. Her gown was creased and her feet had been arranged neatly upon the settle. The tavern swam. With difficulty she looked past the Moor’s head to the window. Through the lattice she saw one star, steadfast and burning bright. She thought: it is the end of the world. Night has come in the morning. She felt a weightless warmth in the crook of her arm. The monkey was there, fast asleep.

‘It’s over,’ said Salazar. ‘All over, little one. Quick, and noble.’

She tried to speak, and failed.

‘He was not tortured,’ said Salazar. ‘Nor was he despoiled. One stroke, swift and clean. He smiled on the scaffold. My faith is not yours; yet who knows that we do not all cheat death?’

Then he gathered her to his coloured breast and rocked her, humming his foreign song as if he did not care, for this was the way to heal her; no commiseration, no crying against what cannot be mended.

‘Now,’ he said at last. ‘My time here is done. But you?’

‘I do not know,’ she answered. ‘I do not care.’

‘You have a place,’ said Salazar. ‘Tell me where, and I will take you there.’

‘I have nowhere, no one, nothing.’

‘Impossible.’ His ear-rings gleamed in the candlelight. The inn was filling up; gossip drifted among the high-backed stalls.

‘Did you love none but him?’ he asked gently. ‘No man, woman or child?’

Within her purse, Grace’s fingers cracked on the last letter. Plantagenet, cursed by the witch. And his words, returning like ghosts: The wheel comes full circle! She thought: I have been blind, uncaring, utterly ignorant. That dragging love I felt – it is turned to gall. My only love is dead, headless – accursed like the whole of York and Plantagenet. I have loved evil – the evil of Elizabeth.

‘I will go to the witch,’ she said softly.

‘Bueño,’ said Salazar, calmly. ‘Tomorrow I will speed you there. She lies at Bermondsey.’

‘I will be revenged upon the witch,’ said Grace, and trembled. Salazar nodded gently.

He paid the boatman and saw Grace embark near Dowgate. He left her and was gone, tall, coal-black and mysterious, more elemental than man. He would return to Spain, where he could report to Ferdinand and Isabella that England was gaining in stability. He watched one of the last victims of that stability sitting muffled in her green hood as the boat struck out across the river. He scratched his monkey’s ear, and sighed.

Grace passed through Southwark with its teeming stews and whorehouses and into the quieter area of Bermondsey, where the tower of St. Saviour split the sky and the sound of its mournful bell floated across the river. Water and sky were opaque and each dull flat cloud, each timeless ripple, held a terrible truth. Several times she repeated: ‘John is dead!’ trying the words out, trying to find in them a clue to rob them of meaning. For the first time in her life she saw the terrible face of hatred and felt its fangs. Now she knew the craving for vengeance that poisons every sight and sound, turns blood acid and stretches the spirit on a subtle rack. She knew what John had felt, and why, unrevenged, he had gone almost placidly to death. Death was better than the insupportable corruption, the lonely sickness of hatred, with each stab of which her memory grew long, bringing old weapons brightly renewed; Elizabeth’s coldness, her curses, that slap in the face. All rushed, a ragged army, to fan the fearful power into an inferno. Her mind felt like a swollen serpent’s egg, filled with all the clamour of the condemned dynasty, and heavy with its tears. She took the unfamiliar burden of hatred upon her, felt its sourness, shivered in its flame. She looked up at the vast door of Bermondsey Abbey and saw it misted, corroded, red.

She pulled the bell and heard it jangling down catacombs of darkness. She muttered: ‘Like a dog, I loved her!’ The wheel comes full circle. Then again, wearily, as if questioning the dying bell’s note: ‘John is dead.’ Infected by hatred, Grace said loudly: ‘I am Plantagenet! and I will rid the world of this pestilence!’

Perhaps she is sick, she thought. Lying defenceless in some rich chamber. It will be easy; she is old and I am young and strong. If she should want a drink, it will be easy to doctor her cup. There are swift poisons and there are slow. Dementedly her lips drew back from her teeth. She tugged the bell again. From within came the slap of sandals, and the grille was slid aside. A monk peered through the aperture and saw a dishevelled woman, green eyes that sparked like the eyes of a demon, a slight body shaking as under a gale.

‘What do you want, daughter?’

He had an expressionless voice.

‘The Queen-Dowager …’ began Grace softly and stopped. No. This was certain failure. There must be subtlety. She went on her knees on the step.

‘Sanctuary,’ she said formally. ‘I crave Sanctuary for the love of God and King Henry.’

The face disappeared for an instant. The great door opened. The monk was revealed, his pallor disembodied against his robe and the creeping darkness behind him.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are by charter a sanctuary house.’ He peered at her. ‘In the King’s name, what is your crime? Treason?’ They were careful at St. Saviour’s; the fall of the Abingdon Abbot for having sheltered the Stafford brothers was well known.

‘Whoredom,’ said Grace dementedly, and laughed. The monk’s face grew long, hiding relief.

‘Follow me,’ he said, and walked away, girdle and keys swinging. She went after him down a cloister so cold that it raised the hair on her scalp, and under forbidding arches, past many doors closed like tombs. A thought came to her in passing: it is not a sanctuary, it is a prison. She looked eagerly at each door, for one of them housed the enemy. She followed the monk into a small round chamber with dim lights set high and deeply into the walls. There, he seated himself at a table, took up a pen, opened a ledger. He asked her name, and when she answered, looked up sharply.

‘Your fame is not unknown.’ He chewed the quill, indecisive. The King had given no instructions on this score.

‘I will consult my lord Abbot: wait here.’ He went out, and Grace stood still, near to the door left ajar, and trembling from the cold, thinking only: Where is she? with her glacial, crescent-moon face, once so beloved. Reclining somewhere, little knowing that today is her last upon this earth. Grace’s eyes strayed to the walls. The Abbot, before taking holy orders, had been a fighting man; some of his old weapons were displayed. A tarnished shield, a rusty sword with an ornate hilt, and a delicate poignard studded with three red stones. This last Grace unhesitatingly took down; she thumbed its edge and stared at the starting bead of blood on her flesh. After all the years, the dagger was sharp enough to shear a blade of grass. She tucked it in her belt and arranged her cloak in concealing folds. Somewhere down the cloister a door opened and closed. Grace swallowed, and wiped her wet palms, one with the other. Soon, now, if God were merciful.

The monk came back, entering so softly that her heart shook. He carried a small whip and a rosary in one hand. In the other he held a breviary.

‘My lord Abbot is satisfied,’ he said. ‘I may deal with your penance. Take off your shoes, my daughter.’

Grace knelt and unplaced her little pointed slippers. Looking at the flagstones, she said casually:

‘Is it true that the Queen-Dowager is here?’

‘She is; the King suggested that she should retire here, for her health and comfort. Are you ready?’

She stood up and the cold leaped to encompass her naked soles. It was like putting her feet in fire. Within seconds, her ankles began to ache; ice shivered her skirts. The monk moved forward, proffered the scourge and the book.

‘Now you must walk,’ he said gently. ‘Fifty times along the cloister. Give yourself five-and-twenty lashes and say fifteen Aves. Then I will give the absolution. I must strike the first blow in the name of God.’

Grace knelt again. She pushed back her hood and parted the curling hair in the nape of her neck. The monk said: ‘In Nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,’ and raised the little whip. She waited, oblivious, uncaring. Again, she heard the sound of a door closing in the passage without. Soon, she would find the enemy.

‘For God’s love! Stop!’

The voice was colder than the stones and filled the chamber, a shriek. It was a voice used to command, yet ghostly, an exhausted voice raised in outrage. Very slowly Grace lifted her head. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a rush of black garments, the monk’s hand falling, the knout go spinning to the floor. And the voice spoke again, silver, imperious, yet drained, as if by its first utterance.

‘For Jesu’s love, Master Dominic! Are you mad? This child …’ The voice broke, on a sob. ‘This child is without sin!’

‘Madame,’ said the monk, bewildered.

‘Would to God that my life were hers,’ said the sobbing voice. ‘And that I had had her charity! Strike me, Master Dominic! Strike me!’

‘Madame,’ he said again, deeply shocked.

‘Grace!’ gasped the voice. ‘Like her name … full gracious, and my true beadswoman and comforter. Kind beyond belief. Would that I had been as kind.’

There was touch as well as a voice. A thin transparent hand with raised blue veins clasped Grace’s wrist. An icy, burning hand, that sucked all hatred away into itself. The hand of salvation. Grace looked into the face of Elizabeth. The face came close; she kissed her on the mouth.

‘You have come back!’

Hard against her hip Grace felt the poignard. Her fingers found it, drew it from her belt. Elizabeth’s tremulous voice went on, addressing the priest.

‘This child … is the reminder of my past sin. She is my living penance, my sin-eater. And you would scourge her, Master Dominic!’ He, his narrow life utterly dislocated, was praying to cover the Queen-Dowager’s heretical words.

Then Elizabeth saw the knife. Her steady look encompassed it; in her eyes a joyous excitement grew.

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Give me release. Be kind, my Grace. And when your kindness is ended, pray for my soul. Your prayers were always the most efficacious.’

The dagger slipped from Grace’s hand and shivered on the floor, its blade pointing away. Brother Dominic picked it up and, his face a mask of disapproval, replaced it on the wall. Still muttering a psalm he strode from the chamber. Grace began to cry, in long shuddering sobs. Elizabeth wrapped her thin arms about her. Embraced, they knelt upon the freezing floor, beside the tokens of penance, the rosary, the book, the scourge.

‘Pray for me,’ Elizabeth whispered. ‘Be merciful; be my living token of grace.’

‘Madame,’ said Grace, weeping. ‘Isabella.’ She did not know why she used the name. It was a name heard long ago, a courtly name, an infant’s memory; even perhaps a name unheard. Fitting, anyway, for this re-baptism of Elizabeth. The name said farewell to hatred. The hatred that rocks worlds and ruins kings and kills the common man.

‘Protect me from Melusine and all her works,’ said the Queen-Dowager. Grace held her close. Elizabeth was skeletal, her flesh alternately freezing and burning. She had shrunk in stature; her face was yellow. She wore the wimple of deep mourning.

‘I am not without sin,’ said Grace. ‘But I will pray for you and guard you. I will not leave you.’

The sad, perished face lightened a trifle.

‘Stay,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Stay until I am dead.’

Grace raised the Queen-Dowager and helped her to a stance. Very slowly they left the chamber together. The November evening gathered. A ray of misty light peeped through the windows and touched the rusted weapons of war, hanging still and silent on the walls.

Epilogue

1492

AND now the little flame burned sadly beneath the fair face of the Virgin, so that the compassionate mouth seemed to smile. The Matins bell had rung and the deep chanting of the monks had died away, their office finished. The night was quiet save for a soft breeze whispering at the window. The chamber was still, waiting, as the unseen stranger waited. Elizabeth’s breath came harshly, ceased for seconds, then began again, a soft sound that was compounded of echoes, shadows, the language of the undiscovered land.

All the women except Mistress Grace had gone. The others were the King’s servants, young, and ignorant of the time that was passing away with Elizabeth. Grace had controlled their gossip and their idleness and had made them serve the Queen-Dowager as was fitting. Yet there was no place for them now. Dr. Benedictus had made his last examination and gone away. Elizabeth had been shriven. Even so, it was doubtful whether she knew that she was dying. She whispered, spoke names, and held Grace’s hand. Lucid if only to herself, she held conversations, repeated the score of names that lately had narrowed to one or two. This night she dwelt hour on hour upon one alone.

‘John, my lord …’ she said, and smiled with closed eyes.

Grace’s head drooped. She rested it upon her clasped hands. Five years, she thought, and still the name turns a blade in my heart. They lie, who say that time heals all. Elizabeth is proof of this. It is thirty years since her fair John was slain. And seven-and-twenty years since her coronation. And almost as long since Desmond’s death. Desmond, the reason for my existence. A strange story, told during the years of sorrow at Bermondsey; yet a story which, on first hearing, had seemed to Grace more like a reprise, a recollection, a legend in her blood. She raised her head again and looked at Elizabeth. Elizabeth, alone. Brothers and sisters dead, all save Catherine, who never came. The latest victim of circumstance was the seaman-knight, Sir Edward, killed in a skirmish at St. Aubyn du Cormier. The house of Woodville was all but extinguished. As for Elizabeth, the cheerless years at St. Saviour’s had killed her slowly, by inches. There had been but one day of parole, an incident that might have been comical but for its irony.

The King had commanded her appearance at court, for the sake of the French Ambassador’s visit. Bess had been brought to bed of a daughter, Margaret, and could not attend the reception. The court was greatly changed; folk smiled when the King smiled, walked as if over live coals; and never spoke above a murmur. Holiness, riches and pageantry existed, coldly muted. The Ambassador had seemed impressed, although the sight of Elizabeth, already mortally ill, had disturbed him. The King too had not been unobservant. His incisive glance appraising Elizabeth, he had called his Chancellor to his side.

‘An annuity to the Queen-Dowager in her retirement,’ he had said vigorously. ‘Four hundred livres for life!’ There had been a genteel hiss of approbation from Henry’s mammets, who danced and sang to his calling.’

The money had not lasted long. Some time before this June night, she had made her will, a pathetic little document witnessed by the Abbot of Bermondsey and Dr. Benedictus.

‘In the name of God, 10th April, 1492, I, Elizabeth by the Grace of God Queen of England’ (they let this pass) ‘being late wife to the most victorious prince of blessed memory, Edward IV …’

The pride was still there, but changed, refined. It was lawful, and held no vanity. When she was asked for instruction as to her burial, she said softly: ‘Let me be interred with … my lord.’

‘Ah, with Edward at Windsor,’ they said. Then she failed again and left the will for an hour, while she fell into the swift delirium that plagued her. They wrote what they thought fitting.

‘Item, I bequeath my body to be buried with the body of my lord at Windsor.’ Later, recovering, she looked at their writing and nodded sadly, continuing more strongly thereafter.

‘…without any pompous interring or costly expenses done thereabout.’ Ruefully she said: ‘Whereas I have no worldly goods to do the Queen’s Grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure with, neither to reward any of my children according to my heart, and mind, I beseech God Almighty to bless her Grace, with all her noble fame …’

Then she laughed a little, and said: ‘What is my blessing worth, masters?’ Dr. Benedictus and the Abbot bowed, without answering.

‘I will that such small stuff and goods that I have to be disposed truly in the contentation of my debts and for the health of my soul, as far as they will extend.’

Here she looked at Grace piteously, wishing that there were gold and jewels to leave her, but saying nothing, for there was no need with her hand in the kind hand of Grace, who asked for no reward. When the will was done, the Abbot and Dr. Benedictus signed and affixed their seal and went, bloodless and remote, away. Again her spirit lapsed and she raved softly in the bed, crying of Desmond, of Thomas Cooke, of Gloucester, of Dick and Ned. She was mercurial and strange; one day, fevered, she told Grace: ‘Bury me at midnight.’

Grace noted this down faithfully, but said: ‘Midnight, sweet dame?’ and Elizabeth muttered of Lusignan, dreamed of Melusine and the pool, of Gyot, Gedes, Geoffrey of the Tooth, and woke with a cry. Sometimes she said, fervently: ‘In manus tuas, Domine’, and Grace whispered a paternoster, watching Elizabeth, craving her release from the interminable sickness.

And now it was June, in the small and weary hours, and the look on Elizabeth’s face was unmistakable. She seemed to grow younger every hour, pale and small and childish, her fluent blood stilling, her quicksilver mind running down like a silent glass, her hands no longer stirred by palsy or pain.

‘John. Ah, love …’ she said, and groaned. ‘Lusignan … the monster child destroyed his brother …’

Her eyes opened on Grace, who said gently:

‘Are you still afraid?’

‘I have wrought great evil,’ said Elizabeth for the hundredth time.

‘Ah’ said Grace, and kissed her. ‘There, Madame. It is finished.’ She mused that Elizabeth was only the instrument of something mystic and vast. She thought: Like all of us, she was put upon this earth to tread the written measure of destiny. For I sometimes believe that our life is a map drawn before our conception, our joys and sorrows meted out, far from our consciousness. And how shall we be remembered? Destiny having used us and consigned us to dust, shall we, perhaps, be unremembered? What of our loyalties and our loves, our passions and our tears? Our power is all that might leave a mark upon the world. She looked down at Elizabeth’s fading countenance. Where is power now? Gone, together with beauty and riches. She was an instrument. And so was I. I, who loved one man and one woman. Less than a dusky moth, born to dance and die in a night.

Elizabeth whispered: ‘You loved me … does this absolve me?’

‘Perhaps I inherited a little of Desmond’s soul, Madame. As his death was the reason for my birth, perhaps a little of Desmond forgives you. If not all. Maybe this was my destiny, Isabella, my lady.’

‘Grace.’ The voice was faint.

‘Madame?’

‘At my funeral … I wish twelve poor men of the City to follow me and be rewarded. No pomp or splendour. See to it. We shall go by river to Windsor. Be with me to the end.’ She was breathing badly, in quick, tearing gasps.

‘I shall be with you,’ said Grace steadily. And the water will be calm.’

Elizabeth did not hear. Her eyes, their brightness dimmed at last, looked past her companion. She tried to sit up; sudden tremulous joy illuminated her face. It was plain that though her body was willed to lie with Edward, her spirit had its own destination. Grace rose quickly, crossed the room and flung open the window. The night breeze swept in, smelling of June lilies and on the edge of morning, for somewhere a bird awoke with a crystal spray of song.

The breeze gained vigour and curled about the chamber joyfully, like a child at play. In its niche beneath the Virgin, the flame went out.

THE END

About the Author

Bestselling author both in the UK and North America, Rosemary Hawley Jarman was born in Worcester. She lived most of her time in Worcestershire at Callow End, between Worcester and Upton on Severn. She began to write for pleasure, and followed a very real and valid obsession with the character of King Richard III. With no thought of publication, she completed a novel showing the King in his true colours, away from Tudor and Shakespearian propaganda. The book was taken up almost accidentally by an agent, and within six weeks a contract for publication and four other novels was signed with HarperCollins. The first novel, We Speak No Treason, was awarded The Silver Quill, a prestigious Author’s Club Award, and sold out its first print run of 30,000 copies within seven days. We Speak No Treason was followed by The King’s Grey Mare, Crown in Candlelight and The Courts of Illusion. She now lives in West Wales and has recently published her first fantasy novel, The Captain’s Witch.

Copyright

Cover illustration courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

This edition first published in 2008

The History Press

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This ebook edition first published in 2013

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