Текст книги "A Dangerous Inheritance"
Автор книги: Alison Weir
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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 35 страниц)
After dinner, we would be drilled in French and Italian, and then we had to read from the Bible or the classics. I think I read the Bible three times over. Even then we were not free, for after supper we were expected to practise our music, dancing and needlework before being banished to our beds at nine o’clock. There was hardly any time for our own favoured pursuits. Even on holidays, when the merry maypole was set up and the Morris dancers made sport on our lawn, we were kept to our daily tasks and not allowed to take part. So I find it difficult to live in idleness. I do not know how to fill the long, spacious hours.
‘What shall I do?’ is my constant question. My lady the Countess kindly takes time to instruct me in the ordering and running of the household, which will be my responsibility one day, but not for ages yet, God willing. She finds me books to read, or tapestry to stitch, although I am not very good at it. I cannot, whatever I do, make the stitches small enough. My mother-in-law is endlessly patient. I believe she feels sorry for me, but does not like to say so for loyalty to her husband.
With Harry, it is difficult. It is hard to be together, knowing we are man and wife, yet not free to love each other. Yes, we kiss and we embrace, but only furtively or self-consciously, for we are never left alone together: there is always at least one servant within sight or earshot. And at night, my door is locked. My lord Earl will not risk his will being thwarted a second time. It would be easier if I could understand why we are being kept apart, but it still makes no sense to me. If I venture to ask, I am told – not unkindly – that I am too young to understand.
But Harry has of late been taken a little into his father’s confidence. When I suggest, only half jesting, that he attempts to steal the key and come to me at night, he tells me no, it cannot be, for fear of Northumberland.
‘Northumberland?’ I echo. ‘What has our marriage got to do with him?’
Harry looks unhappy. There is no one within earshot in the courtyard, only a gardener dead-heading the flowers in the stone urns, but still he bids me lower my voice.
‘Northumberland urged our marriages, ours and that of your sister to his son,’ he mutters. ‘Maybe he feels being allied to royal blood enhances his power.’
There is something that does not make sense. ‘In that case,’ I say, ‘it would make better sense to let us consummate our marriage.’
Harry looks at me admiringly. ‘It would indeed! It would bind our families irrevocably to him. By God, I have it! Maybe Northumberland and our parents don’t want to be committed for good.’
‘That makes sense, given what I overheard my father and mother saying,’ I say.
Harry shakes his head. ‘But why would they not want to be bound? Why agree to the marriages in the first place?’
‘I cannot think,’ I say. ‘You could ask your father.’
‘He would not tell me,’ he answers glumly.
Nevertheless, that evening, at the supper table, Harry makes so bold as to bring up the matter.
‘Sir,’ he ventures, ‘why do you and my lord of Northumberland not wish our families to be bound for good by our marriage?’
The Earl appears disconcerted, but recovers himself at once and lays down his knife on his plate. ‘Who said that we do not?’ he asks.
‘We worked it out for ourselves, Sir,’ Harry says. ‘We know that Northumberland suggested these marriages, and that, in some way that you will not reveal, they are advantageous to him. But maybe there are disadvantages too.’
There is silence for a moment, and then the Earl roars with laughter. ‘You’re a statesman, Harry, by God! And you have a good grasp of politics. But rest assured, your mother and I would not bind you in a disadvantageous match. The Lady Katherine here is the King’s own cousin, of royal lineage, and herself in the line of succession. Who could be more suitable? Nay, lad, curb your passions and let wiser heads rule you. You will not be stayed from your wife for long. Be patient, I counsel you.’ And with that, the Earl changes the subject and speaks of hunting. It is an end to the matter. But am I the only one who noticed that, when he laughed, his eyes remained cold?
Harry and I are bored. We have played chess in the garden, read our favourite poems aloud to each other, raided the kitchens for marchpane and comfits, and played hide-and-seek in the great state rooms, always with the inevitable servant keeping a safe distance.
We are getting to know each other. His face, so utterly dear to me, is now as familiar as my own. I try to stop myself wishing that his body could be too, for in every other respect we are becoming closer in our minds and hearts, united in our shared sense of injustice against the world, Northumberland and our parents. It has bound us faster than I could ever have imagined.
I am finding Harry to be not just a loving husband, but a young man of letters and culture. He has been well tutored, which is no surprise, since his mother – dead these two years now, and much mourned by her son – was very learned. After this early grounding, the Earl sent Harry to live with a tutor at the university at Cambridge, yet he is no bookish dullard: he likes a good play too, is passionate about racing horses, and collects books and manuscripts on heraldry.
He snatches every opportunity to touch me, to kiss and caress me, but he always ends up on fire for me, and finds it very frustrating to have to hold himself back. In the beginning, I would ask myself if I truly loved him, as is my duty as a wife. Now, I no longer need to ask myself that question. It is my duty – but also my greatest joy and pleasure. I am a changed person because of Harry. I feel myself opening outwards, blossoming like a flower, as I reveal myself to him bit by bit – my inner nature, my hopes and fears, my very soul – knowing that everything about me is precious in his eyes. And he is no less dear in mine. I cannot have enough of him.
So here we are, this hot June day, weary after so much running about, wondering what to do next to fill the empty hours, when we are both tense with the knowledge that we could be spending them in bed, were we allowed to. Wandering through the vast house, we enter the old wing, the only part that escaped the attentions of my great-grandfather, Henry VII. Here, the chambers are smaller, wainscotted and panelled, with stone fireplaces and mullioned windows grimed with dirt. Dust motes dance in the musty air; there is a faint smell of damp, and something nasty, probably a dead mouse, behind the wainscot. Wrinkling my nose I walk on into the next room, where I pause before a portrait of an old lady dressed as a nun, in a long wimple and chin barbe. She looks very severe and forbidding. There is a date painted above her shoulder: 1490.
‘I know her,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen her likeness before. That’s the Lady Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, and my great-great-grandmother.’
‘Wrong!’ cries Harry. ‘It’s the old Duchess of York, Cecily Neville. She was the mother of Edward IV and Richard III, and your great-great-great-something-grandmother! She lived here in the last century – ran the household like a nunnery, for she was very religious. But that wasn’t always the case!’
‘I heard tell that she was a very venerable lady,’ I say.
‘Not always. It was quite openly said that she betrayed her husband with an archer, and that Edward IV was the archer’s son.’
‘I can’t imagine her betraying her husband with anyone, looking at her picture!’ I giggle.
Harry laughs. ‘I can’t even imagine her having a husband,’ he says.
‘Do you think it’s true, what people said?’ I ask, staring at the portrait and trying in vain to imagine the Duchess Cecily as she would have looked in her younger days.
‘Who can say? My tutor told me that two of her sons, no less, made the accusation. Richard III was one of them.’
‘Oh well, in that case it can’t be true,’ I retort. ‘Richard III was a deceiver and a murderer. How could he have said that about his own mother?’
‘Indeed, especially if it wasn’t true.’
‘I’ll wager he just made it up.’
‘No, hedidn’t,’ Harry tells me. ‘Apparently his older brother, the Duke of Clarence, had said it first, many years before, when he wanted to impugn Edward’s title so he could get the crown for himself. He was a villain too, by all accounts. He was executed by drowning in a butt of Malmsey.’ I had heard that old tale many times.
‘They were all villains, by the sound of it,’ I laugh.
We wander on, through several more interconnecting rooms, most of them bare of furniture and very dusty. It is obvious that even the servants rarely come here. The few old pictures that still hang on the walls are cracked or buckled. There is one that strikes me particularly. It is very finely done, a half-length of a young girl, a very pretty girl with a sweet round face, serene dark wide-set eyes and thick, wavy chestnut hair bound only by a filet. She wears a rich blue gown figured in gold with an embroidered border around the neckline, and an exquisite diamond-shaped pendant. Her beauty and grace are arresting, and the colours look as fresh as if the picture had been painted yesterday.
‘Who is that?’ I ask Harry.
‘I have no idea,’ he replies. ‘It’s probably been here for years. It’s not anyone I recognise.’
I peer closer. ‘There is no clue, no coat of arms or date or age. But she must have been someone important to have had her likeness painted.’
The girl seems to stare back at me: her face is skilfully painted and uncannily life-like. I feel I know her from somewhere, but that cannot be, as the style of her dress is years out of date; and yet I am drawn to her. It’s not just that it’s a beautiful portrait. There is something more, something about the eyes. The limner has caught them so craftily: they seem to be looking directly into mine, holding mine, appealing … He must have been a master of illusion, I think, as I drag myself away, breaking the spell.
Harry slides his arm around my waist, and just at that moment there is a muffled footfall not far behind us. We are being watched again. It’s a horrible feeling because the watcher is keeping himself just out of sight in the next room. But Harry seems unaware. He is looking at the painting.
‘Those clothes are very fine, but very old-fashioned. This must have been done years ago, possibly back in the Duchess Cecily’s time.’
‘Maybe it’s a princess,’ I venture.
‘Aye, one of the daughters of Edward IV perhaps. They were Duchess Cecily’s granddaughters, and what more natural for her to have a picture of one of them? I wonder if there is anything on the back.’ He lifts the painting off its hook, scattering enough dust to make us cough, and turns it around. There is nothing to see but the date ‘1484’ inked in spiky faded script.
‘Well, I was right!’ he declares. ‘It does date from the Duchess Cecily’s time. She died in 1495, I recall. Possibly it’s Elizabeth of York.’
I know it cannot be. We have a portrait of my great-grandmother, Henry VII’s queen, at home at Bradgate, and she looks nothing like this girl. She had fair, reddish hair.
Harry slides the picture back on its hook, and I take one last, wistful look at it before following him into the next chamber. I am much taken with the young girl in the portrait. If only I could discover who she was.
*
There is little of interest to me in the rooms beyond, although Harry is intrigued by a rusted sword that rests suspended on hooks above a fireplace, and stops to examine it.
‘This was a fine weapon once,’ he murmurs. But I am not interested in swords. I walk ahead, into a narrow windowless passage leading only to a spiral stairway. It is dark here, but from above a bright shaft of sunlight illumines the stairwell. I stop, my blood running cold. For there appears before me, in the pool of light reflected on the wall, what seems like the black shadow of a moving hand, its index finger extended, beckoning me up the stairs.
I start trembling. Is there someone up there, playing a trick on me? A ghost? Surely not, I pray: it is broad daylight, and ghosts are creatures of the night, or so I have always been told. But there is something horribly sinister about the summoning shadow, and although it is a hot day, the passage has suddenly turned freezing cold. With the chill fingers of fear creeping up my neck, I stand shaking, unable to move but compelled to watch.
Then suddenly the beckoning hand disappears, and Harry is behind me. The spell is broken and I turn to look at him, relieved beyond measure to have him near me.
‘By God, what’s the matter, sweetheart? You look as if you’ve seen—’
‘I have! A ghost! There was a shadow – a hand beckoning me upstairs. There, on the wall. It’s gone now. It was there, and then it just wasn’t there any more.’ I realise that it is considerably warmer now.
Harry’s face darkens. ‘So help me, if anyone has played a cruel prank and affrighted you, they will answer to me and my father for it!’ he assures me. ‘Wait here. I will go up and investigate.’
‘No, don’t leave me!’ I plead.
‘You are not alone,’ Harry says comfortingly. ‘Sanders is not far behind us. Aren’t you, Sanders?’ His voice rises on the last words.
His father’s groom – our unwanted shadow – immediately appears in the doorway. ‘Aye, my lord.’
‘Stay here with my lady,’ Harry commands. ‘No doubt you overheard all that. I won’t be a moment.’
The sight of Sanders, solid, dour and for once strangely welcome, has steadied me. I am happy for him to guard our rear.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I say to Harry. ‘Let Sanders keep watch down here.’
‘Very well,’ says Harry. ‘I’ll go first.’
‘My orders are to attend on you both at all times, my lord,’ Sanders protests.
Harry looks furious. ‘We will not be gone long; we’ll only be up the stairs. And I have reason to believe that there is someone up there who is bent on making mischief. If I need you, I will call you, or send my lady down to you. Someone has to stay here to make sure that the culprit has no possible means of escape.’ He speaks with an authority he has never before asserted in my presence, and although Sanders looks unhappy, he nods and acquiesces.
Harry grips my hand and leads me up the twisting stair. We climb higher and higher, me bunching up my skirts so as not to trip, and emerge at last in a circular turret room lit only by a narrow window overlooking the broad width of the busy Thames. There is no exit – and no one here. The room is empty, apart from an old iron-bound chest below the window.
‘You must have imagined it, my love,’ says Harry, and then in one swift movement he gathers me in his arms, kisses me hard on the mouth and pushes me against the cold, whitewashed wall before I can catch my breath. He is breathing heavily, grappling with my skirts, and whispering hotly in my ear, ‘We must be quick, dear heart! It’s not the way I wanted it to be, but I must have you …’
He is panting so hard I cannot make out the words, and soon I no longer care, for I am swept along by his sense of urgency. We are clinging to each other as if we can never let go, opening up to each other, striving to become one, and hastily disarranging our clothing – and then there is a cough from below, and footsteps coming up the stairs. Quickly I smooth down my skirts and my hair, while Harry, breathless, ties the points of his codpiece – and just in time, for Sanders appears a moment later, looking at us suspiciously. I feel my cheeks flaming and turn to the window. I have to admire Harry’s composure. He is superb.
‘No one was up here,’ he tells the groom, as calmly as if he had not been in the throes of desire only seconds before. ‘My lady must have imagined what she saw. There is nothing of note here, just that old chest. We checked inside, to see if someone was hiding in there, but there are only a few old papers. Does that satisfy you?’
‘I am just obeying my orders, Lord Herbert,’ the groom says resentfully. ‘I don’t enjoy it any more than you do, Sir.’
‘No, I don’t suppose you do,’ Harry says, more kindly. ‘The view from here is splendid,’ he adds. ‘We have been admiring it. You can see the heights of Highgate and Islington from here.’ He winks at me and I try not to giggle.
Sanders grunts, and says we should go down, and Harry, squeezing my hand and mouthing ‘I love you’, follows him, preceding me on the stairs. If only our spy had not appeared! Up in that turret room, my love awakened a need in me; I wish, how I wish, I could recapture the moment.
‘We must be getting back,’ Harry urges. ‘We have got ourselves all mucky in here, and Heaven only knows what my lady mother will say if we appear at the supper table looking like two vagrants, eh, Katherine!’
We retrace our steps through the old wing, emerging thankfully into the gilded splendour of the modern part of the house, and summoning our personal servants to attend us. It is only when I am back in my bedchamber, seated at my mirror, that I start shuddering again at the memory of that beckoning hand.
My maid comes and unlaces my gown. It is damp with sweat and dusty.
‘That’ll need sponging, my lady,’ she decrees, hanging it up on a peg. Then, as I stand there at the mirror in my petticoat, dabbing my armpits with rose water, I catch her reflection: she is looking at my skirts.
‘I see your courses have come, my lady,’ she says. ‘I’ll fetch some cloths for you.’
When she has disappeared into the inner closet, I sit down and reprimand myself. What if Harry and I had gone so far …? In the heat of the moment, I had not given a thought to the possible consequences.
But I mustthink of them. What if I had proved with child? Of course, I should be delighted to have a child, but it would plunge us both into awful trouble. I should have been more prudent; I should have stopped Harry from getting carried away; and yet I cannot but regret that we did not love each other properly. I understand now why men and women risk much for passion, and why they get into terrible tangles simply for a few brief, ecstatic moments of it. But that matter is not the only cause of my disquiet. The chilling memory of what I saw on those stairs still disturbs me. There is something that escapes me about the matter, some connection to be made.
Elegantly garbed and bejewelled, I make my way to the great parlour, where supper is to be served, and stand behind my chair as the family gathers and grace is said. I dare not meet Harry’s eyes for fear of blushing and giving myself away, and yet I can feel his admiring gaze upon me.
We sit down. The Earl lays his napkin over his shoulder, carves some meat from the serving platter and serves us, then breaks his bread. ‘I hear you two young people were exploring the York wing today,’ he says. Clearly Sanders has made his report.
‘Katherine wanted to see it,’ Harry replies easily. ‘We enjoyed looking at the old pictures, didn’t we, sweetheart?’
‘Never go there myself,’ says Pembroke. ‘One day I hope to refurbish or rebuild it, but I have extended my credit on this side of the house. I hear there was a little upset.’ He looks at me enquiringly.
‘I thought I saw a shadow on the stairs,’ I say, embarrassed in case they think me a fool. ‘It was a trick of the light or the eye, I’m sure, but it did give me a fright.’
‘We went to investigate,’ said Harry, ‘but there was no one up in the turret room. The only thing we saw was an old chest. There was no intruder hiding in it!’
‘They would have found it difficult, for that chest contains all the old records and papers from Raglan,’ his father commented. ‘I had it stored up there, out of the way. Anyway, my dear, I trust you are over your fright now.’
‘Yes, Sir, I thank you,’ I say.
‘You may have heard of Raglan Castle, Katherine,’ the Earl continues, signalling to the servants to fill the goblets. ‘It is – or was – our ancient family seat on the Welsh Marches. It was the greatest fortress of its time, and my grandfather, the first Earl, built it.’
‘It’s a mighty castle still,’ Harry says. ‘If only we still owned it!’
‘What happened?’ I ask, hoping I am not being too forward in asking.
‘My grandfather, whom men called Black William, was a staunch Yorkist,’ the Earl explained. ‘He was created Earl of Pembroke by Edward IV, and given custody of the little boy who would one day grow up to be King Henry VII. He brought him up at Raglan Castle. But during the wars between York and Lancaster, my grandfather was defeated while fighting for the King at the Battle of Edgecote, and beheaded.’
‘I’m very sorry to hear that, my lord,’ I say, looking, I hope, suitably mournful.
‘Oh, you must not fret, my dear,’ the Earl says kindly. ‘It happened more than eighty years ago. I never knew him, and my own father died when I was four. Ancient history, as they say.’
‘Black William’s son married twice, but left only a daughter, Elizabeth,’ the Countess chimes in. ‘When she married the Earl of Worcester, Raglan Castle formed part of her inheritance; and so it went out of the family.’
‘But why didn’t it pass to you, my lord, as the heir?’ I ask, puzzled.
The Earl chuckles. ‘Because I was not the heir then. I wasn’t even born. Truth to tell, my dear, my grandfather left several bastard sons, and my father was one of them. I had to make my own way in the world. It’s good service to your monarch that does that – and being a stout fighting man. I prospered under King Harry, and his son made me Earl of Pembroke, not two years since. As I was saying, my dear, that chest of papers came from Raglan Castle. I should go through it one day; one’s family history is always fascinating.’
