The King's Grey Mare Read Online Free

laughed out loud, through sheer nervousness. Maddened further, she rounded on him and caught him a stinging blow across the cheek. The boy, who was the son of one of King Henry’s courtiers and new to the Woodville household, set up a noise like a pig being butchered. Two great hounds leaped roaring from under the table, and Sir Richard hurled his goblet across the chamber. Only Jacquetta had remained calm. Recalling the scene like a nightmare, Elizabeth realized that her mother had not spoken one word.
    The Mass was over; she touched her lips to the Book. The chaplain rose, and, followed by a hobble of aged chantry priests and the singing-boys, came down the nave. She intercepted him in the porch.
    ‘Father, I wish to be professed as a nun,’ she said. Her lips were trembling. He looked at her not unkindly. ‘Nay, my daughter.’ He made to walk on. She caught at his vestment and he looked down, surprised.
    ‘I am in earnest,’ she said softly. Anything, rather than be used, be bidden. Anything so long as she, Elizabeth, could choose. In some convents life was, she believed, almost gay. She would be admired by her sisters as the fairest nun in Christendom.
    ‘No, my child,’ repeated the chaplain.
    ‘You yourself said,’ cried Elizabeth, ‘that my soul was wayward. For my soul’s good, Father, please …’
    The chaplain smiled palely, twisted his gown from her grasp.
    ‘Your reasons are wrong, daughter,’ he said, as if he read her mind. ‘And do you consider yourself fit to be a Bride of Christ?’
    The choir filed past. Standing abjectly in the porch, she heard the chaplain say to an acolyte, ‘My lady is to wed Sir Hugh … by the Rood, Jack, this chalice needs scouring; ’tis foul with fingermarks …’
    The nurse escorted Elizabeth back to her apartments, where she was in durance with no company but that of the baby sisters. They had not allowed Anthony to visit her, and he was leaving that morning, bound again for the house of his patron in the south. Since last evening she had set eyes on neither parent. She sat down before her tapestry frame and began to work with short vicious needle-stabs. Appropriately the picture was one of St. Jerome lecturing some maidens. Elizabeth pushed her needle through his eye. Through the half-open window she could hear voices and the jingle of a bit as a horse tossed its head. She stole a glance at Dame Joan; the woman was drowsing, oblivious of a summer fly crawling on her neck. Elizabeth rose, crossed to the casement and pushed it wide. In the courtyard below a few of the guard lounged, gossiping. A saddled horse waited. Anthony was within the house, making his farewells. The few short sweet hours were over, unshared by her. Again she cursed Earl Warwick’s insolence. Hated Warwick! the fault was his. Warwick, powerful, remote, had, without even setting eyes on her, caused disappointment and grief. Dispiritedly she leaned from the window and listened to the men talking. Policy, of course, the old war-talk that bored her so; the familiar names: York, who last year had returned from Ireland ready to do battle with the royal House of Lancaster. He had been pacified only by a seat on King Henry’s Council, and the King’s declaration of trust in him. Beaufort of Somerset, under whose command her father had once been at Calais; true knight and liegeman of the King and especially of his Queen, Margaret. Hated by York, for some reason, more than any other man. Now they spoke of the Queen; the free, fortunate, beautiful Queen.
    She would never see the Queen. Soon she would be cooped, brooding, on Hugh’s manor, bearing the customary child a year, Hugh himself doubtless flaunting off to Jerusalem again in the service of his lordly master Warwick. Perchance Warwick would visit her during her husband’s absence. Odious thought! her fancy saw Warwick inspecting her household, appointing her servants; her imagination all but endowed the unknown Warwick with horns and a