The King's Grey Mare (71 page)

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.’