Read Online The Maiden and the Unicorn by Isolde Martyn - Free Book Online Page B

not hate her precious Ned?
    * * *
    Richard gritted his teeth as they left their inn hard by Friary Gate next morning and turned into the street that ran along the inner west wall of the city. He was not proud of himself but he had one card left in his hand, a bloody card at that. Would Margery notice that Southampton had a different mood to Exeter, that the citizens shopped tightlipped, their eyes blinkered? The route he chose was circuitous; it led past the castle which the King had shunned.
    "If you will be guided by me, Mistress Margery, do not look to the western walls," he advised her with a tone of superiority that was calculated to provoke rebellion. Of course, she would look—she was a woman.
    It was the stench that assailed Margery first, reminding her of the hanged man in the gibbet, making her belly threaten to return her breakfast.
    "By Our Blessed Lady!" exclaimed Alys, her maidservant, and Stone's men-at-arms swore loudly, their horses jerking and whinnying at a sudden rough handling of their bridles. A reflex almost, Margery looked, glimpsed the disfiguring insults to humanity hoisted above the ramparts and shut her eyes in horror, her head spinning. It was the elite of Warwick's army, the men he had sent to seize his ships and sail them round to Devon. They were men she would have recognised, possibly given a name to but their heads were gone and stakes were...
    She heard Stone curse. Someone's gloved hand grabbed her horse's reins and led it swiftly onward. Tears blinded her. Eventually when they slackened pace and the odour of rotting flesh no longer hung in their nostrils, she was able to distinguish the faintly unpleasant but reassuring smell of seaweed and hear the rhythmic wash of the waves on the sand. Margery ran a knuckle beneath her eyes and tried to staunch her crying. A man's arm came round her shoulders. It had to be Stone, trying to draw her to his shoulder but she shook him away.
    "I know him. The King would never..." She bit her lip, shaking her head violently as if to dislodge those terrible images.
    The horses came to a standstill. They were beyond the castle now.
    "It was on my lord of Worcester's orders, they tell me."  
    'Butcher Worcester,' she muttered.  
    "I warned you not to look, mistress." Stone's voice was kind and gentle, a side of him she had not glimpsed before. He leaned across to tilt her face up. With his gloved finger, he smoothed the droplets from her cheeks and mopped her dry with the edge of the wimple. At least it did have some use, reflected Margery, surprised that her whimsical humour could surface amidst more passionate emotions. She gazed gravely up at her companion.
    "Your advice was wise, Master Stone, I should not have looked. But I am not a child."
    "No," he agreed solemnly, his eyes gently scanning her face. "You are not a child."
    " You think it is wrong, do you not?"
    "Yes," he said softly. "I despise such cruelty."
    "Then we are at last in agreement with one another, Master Stone."
    A slow smile hovered at the corners of his mouth and then lit his entire face. "I am sure it will not last. Shall we go on or do you need more time? You cannot kneel before King Edward with your eyes puffed and red from weeping."
    Stone was right but her appearance was of little importance now. Could the young king she remembered have metamorphosed into a tyrant?
    "I tell you this, Master Stone. If my lord of Warwick ever has Worcester at his mercy, that monster will rue his handiwork," she growled. "Are we almost there?"
    "His grace is at the mayor's house this morning." He pointed up the street to a high gabled house, adorned with a costly frieze of carved oak, its porch cluttered by a dozen soldiers in the King's livery and a score of countryfolk and urchins waiting for a glimpse of the royal profile.
    "Of course, I see it now. I thank you for your care." With that solemn dismissal, she dug her heels into her mare's flank and urged it forward through the throng and