The King's Grey Mare Read Online Free Page B

She wore dove-coloured satin and a high embroidered girdle. Her little shoes of clary velvet were stained with mud and rushes. Otherwise she was immaculate. A hand wearing a pearl-and-ruby rose, beckoned through the hanging frond of leaves.
    ‘Tis like the confessional!’ said Jacquetta, with a tinge of laughter. Elizabeth crept closer.
    ‘And truly I would beg forgiveness, Madame.’
    ‘Be still, Elizabeth.’ The strong white hand took hers, and mother and daughter sat silent for some minutes. In that clasp a force was born, communicating itself from the older woman to the younger. It was like the moments before a storm strikes, and there was in it also warmth, power, something so all-consuming that Elizabeth tried vainly to withdraw her hand.
    ‘Do you think,’ said the Duchess, ‘that I would have you wasted on any paltry Yorkist cur?’
    Light rippled on the water. The leaves shook themselves at the incredible words.
    ‘You did not come to me,’ said Jacquetta, ‘being content instead to rave in unseemly fashion at my lord, which put him in a passion I have taken all night to still. Yet stilled he is,’ with a tiny smile of triumph. ‘You have much to learn of the ways of men. Obstruct them with rough speech, rantings, and, like a hog’s bladder kicked by boys, they grow more resilient. Yet, apply a sweet pinprick, a loving word, a sigh, a tear, and you cause them to think, and think again, and grow womanly, and do your will.’
    She released Elizabeth’s hand, and uprooted a reed.
    ‘Or this, a better allegory-’ twisting and bending the stem brutally. ‘Force will not master this pliant reed. Yet – ’ splitting the green tip with sharp fingernails – ‘apply cunning, art – ’ the reed began to peel in layers – ‘some deviousness so slight ’tis scarcely there at all–’ the stem flaked, showed hollow – ‘and your adversary is undone. So it is with men, and policy, and love.’
    The hypnotic voice ceased. From the further shore of the lake there came the whirring of wings as a brace of wild duck rose and made for the freedom of the forest.
    ‘So they fly,’ murmured the Duchess, watching. ‘And so they escape the ennui of Grafton Regis. How fair the female is, with the sun on her wings!’
    She knows my every thought! marvelled Elizabeth. And, mother of mine though she is, I know her not at all. The past years had done little to bring them close. To Elizabeth, Jacquetta had been a distant, awesome figure, spending much time in Calais, London, Rouen, and almost yearly enceinte with another Woodville child. Jacquetta had seen the London court many times. Yet it was not she who had whetted Elizabeth’s fancy with tales of its glory; these had been gleaned from grooms, maidservants, and were often inaccurate. In all her fifteen years, Elizabeth had had only formal speech with her mother. The Duchess was talking again of Sir Hugh Johns.
    ‘The knight is pleasant enough,’ she admitted. ‘But his policies sour my stomach. No Yorkist shall have my daughter.’ Her pearly face was suddenly savage, then she laughed. ‘This day I will send word to the great lord Warwick declining his liegeman. Not even a King could gainsay me in matters of the heart! No upstart scion of York shall bid my blood!’
    Intrigued, Elizabeth slipped through the screen of willow to kneel at her mother’s feet. The Duchess studied the upturned face. So perfect was its symmetry that she looked, spellbound, for longer than it took for a white frill of cloud to drift across the sun, and for the light to return, blindingly gold. It shone upon Elizabeth’s broad brow, small full mouth and pointed chin. Her eyes reflected back the sky; her hair was silver and gold, utterly unreal in its beauty. By the saints, Jacquetta thought: she is fairer even than I was, and men would maim one another for a smile from me!
    She said: ‘It is time you knew my history. My life with Bedford was happy, almost to the time of his death,