Harlot Queen (50 page)

She tried to laugh away her fears… She tormented herself to no purpose. She had done no wrong—nothing that could be proved against her. And who should dare to do her hurt—royal blood of France, Isabella the King’s mother,
the good Queen
? But all the time memory uncomfortably pricked. Royal blood had not saved her husband, the King himself, from death within prison walls. She strained her eyes into the darkness searching for the first sign of dawn; she longed unspeakably for morning. Darkness made familiar things strange; daylight brought back their familiarity, sent unreasonable fears flying. And morning must surely bring her son. She would speak to him, bring him back to the obedience he owed his mother to whom he was beholden for crown and so loved wife.

All night she knelt by the window. Sometimes she prayed, telling God her requirements; sometimes she rehearsed the words she would say to her son—strong words but not too strong, loving words but not too loving. Now and then she would rise to ease her cramped limbs, then back she would go to her kneeling. Once she took a piece of bread from the table, and, hunger driving, could scarce eat it fast enough though it had gone dry with waiting; she eased it down with wine. But when she tried the meat her stomach rose and she all-but vomited. Back she went to the window and there, the bread-and-wine comforting her, fell into uneasy sleep.

She opened her eyes upon grey morning. Mortimer. He was her instant thought. Where was he? Did he still live? How many days since she had seen him last? She had lost count; but many… too many to hope that he still lived. But when the October sun burst through the mist, when the river sparkled and came alive, then courage rose in her again. She could not believe him dead on such a day. Maybe in this very Tower he watched the sun and thought of her. But—she knew the way of princes, none better—if still he lived he would be shut away in some dark place where he could not see the sun. And, if he thought of her at all, it would be to wonder if she could save him, or to curse their association; nothing more. Love between them had never been equal; such as he had for her would never stand against strain.

The bright day clouded; morning passed into afternoon and still she waited for her son; waited in anger and in some fear, rehearsing the words she would say.

It was late in the evening when the King came.

She rose and made to bend the knee. He did not, as always, raise her before she touched the ground. He let her kneel; and when, at last, he gave her the nod to rise, let her stumble to her feet unaided.

‘Madam,’ and he called her neither Queen nor mother; nor did he sit nor invite her to sit, ‘you are for Windsor to stay there during my pleasure—though pleasure is scarce the word! You are free to go where you will within the Queen’s lodgings and to walk in the King’s private garden but in no other place!’

She brushed his words aside. There was one thing she must know yet dared not ask. It was not fear of the boy her son; it was fear of what she might learn of a deed already done.

‘Mortimer?’ she said at last and there was no sound in her throat.

‘Dead, Madam. What did you expect?’ His young face was stone, the boyish look for ever gone.

‘How?’ She could say no more; the things she had planned to say were useless now. But if they’d granted him an honourable death she’d ask no more of God!

‘What did you expect?’ he asked again; she thought he had prepared his speech, so level the voice so scant the words.

Suddenly his anger broke through; she saw the havoc within. She saw it and did not care; did not care how he suffered so that the news he gave was not the thing she dreaded.

‘A traitor’s death. Need I speak it?’

And when she stood there, hand at her throat, eyes darkened in her head, he said, ‘Hanged and drawn, Madam. Go out by the north gate until you reach the Tyburn—a small river but you’ll not miss it, nor the place we call the Elms…!’

The Elms at Tyburn where they hanged the lowest of the low… and there
his
body hung! Now she knew why, last night, she had shuddered as they came near the north gate. Her eye had not seen; but her blood had known.

‘You must have missed it by night. Go there by daylight, Madam; you’ll see your lover once again. A pity to miss him while yet he’s all of a piece; today we take him down to deal with his body—the traitor that murdered his King and defiled his Queen. We’ll stick his head upon the Bridge—his insolent, wicked head. I advise you to make all haste to Windsor that you may escape the sight; it is not pretty. The lips you’ve kissed so often—I doubt you’ll want to kiss them now!’

At the sight of her stricken face, he cried out, ‘Are you so delicate, Madam, that you cannot speak of the things you two did together and did not hide your shame? No, rather you flaunted your sin! The man’s death was just—fair judgment by his peers; a traitor’s death for a traitor; not more nor less. Be thankful, Madam, we spared him the torment he put upon my father. Fair judgment and time to repent his sins—these things my father never had. We have been merciful, indeed; too merciful. We might have torn him with pincers as he tore the Despensers—for the one defiled his King, the other his Queen!’

And while she went on staring at this terrible stranger that wore the face of her son, he cried out, ‘He confessed; your paramour confessed, there in the cell, before they took him out to hang. And it was not fear of what man might do; he was no coward, that much I give him! It was fear of God loosened his tongue. No need to tell you the things he said—what they were you know already.’

And now she saw what she had seen before but had not truly grasped. He was all in black; not only doublet, hose and cloak, but shoes, chaperon, and gloves, even. All black. A figure of doom.

Again her hands went to her throat. Now, now she understood the meaning. He mourned—and meant her to know it—as though, this very day, his father had died. What new thing had he learned?

What had Mortimer to confess beyond what all Christendom knew—that he had been the Queen’s lover? That his hand had been in her husband’s death? True it was—but let them prove it! Confession dragged from a man in the agony of torment! Let her son swear there’d been none—she’d not believe it! Confession heard—if ever it had been made—by one priest alone. Who could give credence to it?

But there
was
something more; something of which she knew nothing.

He said, ‘I know now how my father came to his death.’ And his face was sickening to behold—like a little animal, she thought, with a life of its own, writhing and twisting. What, she wondered, had stamped that anguish in his face, marks he must bear for ever?

‘I know nothing!’ she cried out, ‘nothing but what they told me—that your father died suddenly.’

‘Is that all, Madam?’ And his smile was dreadful.

‘That is all. What more?
Is
there more? Mortimer never told me, never
said
… not the smallest word. Sir… sweet son, for the love of Christ, believe it!’

‘There
is
more. And what that is I know, and you know! So anything I have forgot you shall tell me!’

The white face framed in the black chaperon was stone now; face of the dead, incapable of love or pity. She felt his will upon her, his black will… like a great bird, she thought, fearful; one of the ravens flown in to sit upon her heart. But what did he want of her? What could she tell him? There came to her mind some words Mortimer had uttered in sleep.

She said, ‘That night… the night he died, they gave him a good supper….’

‘Is that a thing to be remembered—that once the King of England had enough to eat? Did they starve him then, my poor father, and then cram him full before his death like a bird that’s to be killed?’ His face began to work again.

‘A good supper; do you quarrel with that? A good supper and a good bed.’

‘A good bed! Had he lain then upon the earth—the King of England? And the bed;
how
good?’

She said, desperate, since she knew so little, ‘Good enough, I must suppose. A soft bed, clean….’

‘How clean? When they had finished with him—
how clean
?’

‘I don’t know; I don’t
know
.
How
should I know?’

‘Then let me help you, Madam. They cast him upon the bed; they threw him upon his face… and then?’

She tried to escape those eyes that held her prisoner. How could she tell him what she did not know? The eyes, relentless, held her fast.
The bed… the bed….

‘They smothered him with pillows, Christ save us!’ She hazarded her guess; how else could the thing be done?

‘Not so clean a death nor yet so merciful. There was no mark upon him—remember? It was agreed between you!’

She could neither nod nor shake her head; she stood there, neck held stiff, eyes sunk deep into their sockets.

‘And then, Madam?’ he asked again. ‘What next?’

And now she did manage to shake her head; stiff head upon stiff neck.

‘Then I must help you. They took the table from the trestles. They laid it across his shoulders and across his back; the upper part of his back only—Madam, mark it! So there he lay helpless at the mercy of them that had no mercy. Must I help you, further?’

She stared fascinated, fearful of what must come; the horror she could not imagine, much less name.

‘They took down his breeches like a child that’s to be whipped… your husband and your King; the Majesty of England. They had a horn, a small neat horn… exactly shaped; you know what that was for!’ And it was not a question.

And still she stood staring. She could not speak with her dried-up tongue, could not shake her stiff head. Because quite suddenly she knew… she
knew
. Mortimer’s mumbled words clashed like cymbals. They had made no sense… no sense. Now they did make sense, heat out a pattern… a crime so appalling the brain blistered and bled; inside her head she felt the bleeding.

Let him not speak. Sweet Christ, let him not speak!

He went on speaking.

‘They had lit a fire, Madam. He must have said his thanks for that. He was courteous and he’d been so cold. Into the fire they thrust the poker; it glowed red-hot. They took the horn, the small neat horn; they seized him, they held him fast. They thrust the horn—Madam, you know
where
! Where but between the buttocks! Do you whiten, Madam? These things you know. They were done; should they not be said? They took the red-hot iron and thrust it through the horn. Christ that a son should speak these things, that a woman give such orders, a man suffer such agony!’

His face was working again; the pain of his breathing tore through him like a knife. He stood forcing himself to quiet, taking in steadier breaths, letting them go again until he could speak once more.

‘Into his body with the red-hot iron; into his very guts. Do I offend your delicacy, Madam?’ Again his smile was dreadful. ‘The horn would tell no tale. No mark upon the body… No mark save the agony on his face so that no man could know the face as his; not even I, his son! Oh it was clever, Madam! Whose wits planned it, yours or his—the man for whom you slew my father? Yours I’ll wager; he was not clever!’ And still he could not bring that hated name upon his tongue.

‘Have you ever thought upon it, Madam—the agony, the live flesh scorching, burning, stinking? And the bleeding; the hidden bleeding? There must be left no mark! And the cries for mercy. And no mercy. No mercy! So to murder a man; any man! But… your King and mine; your husband and my father? I could not do it to a beast let alone a man; not to
him
, even. I might have commanded it and no man blame me; but I could not do it.
That man
died a merciful death; for that be grateful. But my father, my father! The way he died; doesn’t that deed turn all sweet things to rottenness, all beauty to foulness, all your prayers to blasphemy? Do you sleep at nights, Madam? Me, I cannot sleep!’

In the midst of her own anguish, her own fear, she wanted to comfort him—he was after all her son, her young son. She half put out a hand; saw the disgust upon his face and the way he shrank, as though she were a leper, from her touch.

‘But you; you sleep! Why not? You are not a woman; you are an animal, a savage beast. And so the people name you.
She-wolf!
But they wrong such beasts; for they are, as God made them, innocent. You are a were-wolf, rather; a damned creature that goes about her familiar friends to drink their blood.’

She stood there, unhearing; mercifully, his words flowed over her head. Hardened as she was, cruel as she could be, her mind could not, as yet, encompass that death so horrible, so appalling; so, for all the clear detail, not to be imagined. She was filled with loathing; loathing of herself that, asking no question, had let it happen; loathing of Mortimer, of him even, that had commanded it to happen; loathing of him that had been made to suffer it.

Vomit filled her mouth. She threw out her hands. She went down into the darkness.

She lay back in the great chair. Save for the high painting of cheek and mouth she was grey head-to-foot; grey as the gown she wore, gown of the Grey Friars though she was no religious, and if she lived a thousand years, never would be. It was a dress she affected, fancying so to spread some odour of sanctity, to inveigle God’s forgiveness; never would she forgo her small cunnings. And the gown did double duty, covering shrunken arms and bosom that once had been the loveliest in Christendom; no more than her small cunnings could she forget the beauty that had been hers.

She was sixty-three and Mortimer dead these twenty-eight years. She was old, she was weary to the bone, and she repented of her wickedness, God knew. Yet, were it all to do again, still she must do it for love of Mortimer, gentle Mortimer. And she forgot, being told and at times half-crazed, that from the first he had never been gentle, that he had used her to serve his ambition and his lust. She forgot that, cruel and brutal, he had with lies dragged her into a fearful murder. And she forgot, also, the loathing she had felt for him when first she heard the truth of her husband’s death.