Free The King's Grey Mare by Rosemary Hawley Jarman Page B

she would have been obstructive and tantalizing. She kissed Ismania on the cheek and offered to tire her hair in the new Italian fashion. She loaned Lady Dacre the pearl-and-ruby ring. Only when rumour of her attachment crept through the Palace, coming to roost in the women’s chamber, was this new madness explained, and they laughed. Only a little, for John Grey was truly noble, favoured by powerful lords. Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire, the inheritance of Petronilla de Grandmesnil, whose father Baron Hinckley was tenant in capite there to the Conqueror himself, had been handed down to Lord Ferrers of Groby; Bradgate, therefore, was a fine drop of honey to lick from the thorns of marriage! The reason for their jealous laughter was chiefly Elizabeth’s mien; she epitomized the love-lorn maiden of song and ballad. She heard their mockery through an amethyst haze; she looked upon the world with gentle uncaring joy. When without warning the bubble burst, and Beaufort ordered John to accompany him to Calais, it seemed an evil trick of fate.
    On a day when autumn had cursed the trees leafless, John sailed, and Elizabeth went sadly about her duties. Going to the Queen’s bower, she passed the guard; one of the elderly knights chaffed her gently, saying that she looked like a maid preparing for death; her inborn swift anger, fettered for weeks by happiness, rose, an ugly beast. She tongued a cruel retort that brought the blood to the old man’s face.
    The Queen was alone save for a viol-player scraping a lonely French air, and, beside him, two seamstresses repairing a gown. The window was half-open and banged restlessly under the assault of the wind. Margaret looked once at Elizabeth; it was enough.
    ‘What troubles you, Isabella?’
    ‘Your Grace cannot wish to learn of my small affairs.’
    A little impatiently Margaret beckoned her nearer. The Queen looked unwell; her face was puffy, her eyes bright with unease.
    ‘Tell all, Isabella,’ she said. ‘I pray you, attend my hair. Take off this cursed headgear. My brow has an iron band around it.’
    Elizabeth lifted off the little coif which was like a crescent moon, webbed with tawdry veiling. The pale hair fell free; she set the comb to the Queen’s small head. The two faces wavered together in the mirror. The comb moved down like a fish through sunlit water. Margaret’s expression was distant, troubled. Elizabeth thought suddenly: Can the Queen ever have loved as I do? All her world encompassed in that saintly, wandering King. She has been wed to him for seven years. Would to God that I were wed. John, ah, John.
    ‘Tell me,’ the Queen repeated. She took a strand of hair over one shoulder and began to braid it deftly. Sighing, Elizabeth said: ‘As you will, Madame. It is an old tale ever repeated. I have met the man I would marry and he has gone away.’
    ‘His name?’ said the Queen lightly, and Elizabeth told her.
    It is a good choice,’ said Margaret. ‘Grey will be wealthy, and he is strong for Lancaster.’ She went on braiding, with delicate, unerring twists, talking almost to herself, like a man who names captains, deploys armies.
    ‘So, he is of the Norman blood. C’est vrai! I believe the title comes through an heiress of Blanchemains to the line of Ferrers Groby. And Bradgate is a prize … their demesne stretches far …
    Elizabeth said, proud of her own extravagance: ‘Madame, I’d take him were he a beggar.’ And then her voice began to tremble. ‘For I love him. I loved him before I was born and I shall love him when we are both dust. With every vein of my heart and every hair of my head, I love him, sore.’
    There was no showmanship in this last speech which astounded even herself. It left her weeping, trying to nudge away tears with the bell of her sleeve. She looked into the mirror and found the Queen’s blurred face. Its expression was indistinguishable.
    ‘And does he, too, love you with this so hot passion?’ enquired Queen