Mistress to the Crown (15 page)

‘Enow, daresay, though ah intend to raise the price.’ Shore glared up at me. ‘But money does not compensate for a man’s honour. Ah thought to stand for alderman at the next wardmote but now ah’ll count myself blessed if they let me stay as a liveryman.’

‘You could have bargained for a knighthood,’ I declared, and noted my sire’s head jerk up like a dog hearing the sounds of supper.

‘You still could, son,’ Father pointed out. ‘In fact—’

Shore knew the old hunger in my parent. ‘By Heaven, Father Lambard, you may get a knighthood out of your daughter
spreading her legs for the King but plague take me if ah’ll ha’ men saying ah made such a bargain.’ He took a swig. ‘Truth is ah were too cursed dumbstruck to ask
him
for anything, and ah dinna see him anyroad, it were her high-handed friend the Lord Chamberlain who spoke wi’ me. Tell ’em you’ve lain wi’ ‘im as well!’

‘Lord Hastings is a friend of yours, Elizabeth?’ Mama’s lips shaped an oval of surprise.

‘Yes, that is how I met the King’s grace.’

‘That’s the way of it,’ sneered Shore, lurching up as though he was going to slap me. ‘Hastings rides ’em first. Procurer of the King’s Strumpets! Is that how it were, wife?’

I flinched. Treacherous blood was heating my face. God forgive me, I wanted to strike him for making me feel a filthy whore.

‘An’ you’ll get the pox.’ Smugly, he waggled a finger at me. ‘There cannot be a strumpet in London that he and his royal master haven’t fucked. Well, thank Heaven, ah’ve not slept with you o’late, you slut. At least, ah shan’t die stinking.’

‘That’s enough!’ My mother stepped between us. ‘We need to discuss this when we are all calmer. It might be better if you moved back to Silver Street, Elizabeth.’

‘Aye, Mother Lambard,’ agreed Shore. ‘Get your lewd daughter out of here, or ah’ll hurl her possessions out t’window in t’gutter and St Anthony’s pigs can urinate all over ’em with my blessin’!’

‘I’ll pack,’ I conceded, anxious to leave the room before the tears rushed down my cheeks. But he was not done with me. ‘Ah’ll sell you to the court for the best price ah can get, Elizabeth Lambard. An’ what’s more, you can whistle for the return of your dowry, nor am ah payin’ this month’s rent or wages for your silkwomen.’ Another consequence I had not thought upon. How simple of me to expect a sensible, gradual parting.

‘Of course, sir!’ I left the chamber with my feelings like a ransacked house.

‘Mistress?’ Isabel rose from the lower stair.

‘You heard?’ With my wrist to my upper lip, I hurtled up to my bedchamber.

‘I think it right marvellous, mistress,’ she exclaimed, following me in. ‘An’ if you please, may I come with you?’

I halted at the chest and turned. She was a looking glass of my own ambition. ‘Oh, so you don’t think I’ll get the pox and end up in Bedlam, then?’

She beamed at me. ‘Course not, mistress. He be talking out his arse, if you’ll pardon me for a-sayin’ so. A woman’s gotta look out for herself and you’re too young to end up with a blunt quill like the master.’ She held out her arms and her honesty was so welcome, that we sat on the chest together like a pair of new orphans and I sobbed my heart out until I could cry no more.

But what promises could I make the girl with my own future so precarious? Better she stay with Shore until he left for Antwerp and then join me.

Satisfied with that suggestion, she went downstairs to fetch me a warm drink while I threw open my clothing chest.

‘Howe and Knotte are doing an uncommon amount of business for us, mistress,’ she declared on her return. ‘An’ every customer wants to stay and chew the cud.’

I swore beneath my breath. ‘See how the infamy begins, Isabel. God’s mercy on us! And how shall it end?’’

‘Pah, I’d rather be choosin’ King Edward than the master,’ she giggled. ‘There, now, you’re smiling again. An’ Knotte says to warn you there’s been a stranger watching the shop since Master Shore arrived home. The fellow looks too full-bellied to be a thief but what he be doin’ hanging around like a bad smell, who can say?’

‘Show me!’ Alas, opening the window was a huge mistake. Coarse huzzahs and whistles greeted me.

‘By Jesu,’ I squealed, drawing my head in straight away.

‘That’s him,’ Isabel whispered. Lounging against the house wall opposite was one of the men who had been dicing outside the chamber at Gerrard’s Hall.

‘Go ask him up to the solar, and if the master gainsays you, tell him it’s his highness’ man come to see me.’

I washed my face and hastened downstairs.

My visitor was not flaunting any royal livery, but a king’s trust gleamed in this man’s quiet confidence.

‘Bryan Myddelton, yeoman usher to my lord the King. You’ll pardon my presence, Mistress Shore, but in the circumstances his grace was concerned for your safety. I did not like to intervene earlier, but is there any way I may assist you now?’

My joy at Ned’s consideration made me doubly sure this was the right decision.

‘Have you the authority to obtain a cart to shift my belongings, good sir? I am returning to my father’s house.’

‘Certainly, Mistress Shore.’

It was that easy. Suddenly, I was a person of consequence. I left the solar with my head higher than before, but I wondered how great the later cost would be.

My husband slapped me hard in the face as I left.

Moving back to Silver Street was like re-entering childhood. My mirror might tell me I was a woman, but my father still regarded me as a rebellious girl. By the end of the week I was walking on nails. Jack was no longer speaking to me because the scandal of my new position had knocked the wheels off his betrothal and our quarrel was swift and snarling.

A thwarted bridegroom, buttered with disappointment and larded with resentment, he saw me as Salome and Delilah baked
in the same pot. For certain, he would have thrown me out if Father hadn’t waved the financial stick.

‘If I say your sister may have shelter here, she shall!’

Jack glared suspiciously from Father to me. ‘She’s got you over some kind of barrel, hasn’t she? Or are you still drooling for the sword tap on the shoulder?’

‘I’m still the head of this family, lad!’

‘
Lad
! I’m twenty-nine, and who runs this poxy business for you? Call Robert home from Calais if you like, but I’m your cursed workhorse and you know it. As for you, you harlot, keep out of my sight. You’ve ruined all my plans. I
loved
her.’

‘Jack, I never meant—’

‘This is as much your fault,’ he snarled at Mama. ‘Encouraging her to run her own business.’

I stepped between them. ‘That’s so unfair, Jack, you wouldn’t even have a business if … if …’ My father’s appalled face had me faltering. I could not tell my brother how I had rescued Father’s reputation with my savings when his whore had almost ruined him. Such a revelation would devastate Mama.

‘If what?’ prodded my brother.

Fortunately Mama was game for fisticuffs. ‘And what’s wrong with your sister running a business, Jack? She’s got as good a mind as yours.’

‘She’s a woman, Mother.’

‘You think I can’t stand on my own two feet?’ I exclaimed hotly.

‘That’s
exactly
what I think.’ That crude swipe had me scarlet, but before I could think of a cutting answer, he stormed out.

The bruises of life often come from those within arm’s length, from those we love.

His bitterness was forgivable. I wiped my tears away and made a silent pledge. I would help him to a more worthy wife if I could
– when the verbal blows had ceased to sting, when there was kindness and understanding once more between us.

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered.

Father grunted. ‘And this is just the beginning.’

I sat down miserably in my old bedchamber and buried my face in my hands. I still had to confront Master Shaa and my silkwomen. The business was so new and making no profit as yet, but the moneys for rent and wages were due and I must pay them. But how? Jack would not offer, my father had recently spent most of his savings purchasing some land in Hertfordshire for a country house for Mama, and the proctor’s fees were rapidly depleting what money I had saved. And then, as I drew my fingers down my cheeks, the answer was given to me. My gold wedding ring! I would send that to Master Shaa to keep my women employed. What’s more, I would no longer stay a-hiding in my father’s house like a penitent.

I determined to brazen things out and attend the Sunday sermon at St Paul’s Yard, but that proved an ordeal. Gossip had already spread like a miasma. Even though Mama went with me, none of the Mercers’ Company came near us, nor my friends, Margery or Alys. There was a distinct, telltale space on the bench between my leprous skirts and the pure ones of the haberdasher’s wife who neighboured me. It was ostracism, and the expectation that we should drink hemlock or stab ourselves with our bodkins was very clear in the sniffy glances sent in our direction.

‘I am sorry, Mama,’ I whispered, grateful that she had the courage to be seen with me. Father had stayed home, pleading a head cold.

‘Do not get in the dumps, my love. We must give people time. Hmmm, I observe Juliana Shaa isn’t here. I wonder where her loyalty lies.’

‘Well, her daughter has a wooden neck, that’s for sure.’

My childhood playmate, Alys Rawson, whose parents lived next door to mine, braved the persistent rain next morning, holding a cered cloth across her starched headdress as she hastened through our back gate. The back gate, mark you! Margery was with her, dragging behind like a reluctant packhorse on a leading rein. Clearly, the sudden infamy of an old friend was too juicy for Alys to ignore. No doubt she wanted to press me until she heard the pips squeak, but I put her in the stocks first.

‘Thank you for not speaking to me at Paul’s Yard, the pair of you.’ I did not sit down with them but stood, arms folded.

‘Well, you are no longer respectable, Lizbeth dear,’ crooned Alys, twitching her skirts, ‘and you might have warned us. We are your oldest friends.’

‘Cupboard friends, it seems.’

Alys’ lashes fluttered. ‘Oh, do not be shrewish. Paddesley’s made life very uncomfortable for poor Margery here.’

Margery was the most subdued I’d ever seen her. ‘He’s forbidden me to visit you, Lizbeth,’ she muttered.

‘But you are here, anyway, Meg. Well, a pity he is so disposed. Given time, perhaps I could have recommended his business to my lord Chamberlain.’

She hung her head. ‘He says I cannot be acquainted with a fallen woman.’

I stared down at her with hurt and sadness. Where was the vibrant girl who had enlivened my childhood? ‘And what does Margery say?’

That pricked her. Face thrust up, she thrust her opinion at me like poison.

‘How dare you bring such scandal on us, Elizabeth! Poor Shore! He says you are determined to drag him through the mire and seek a divorce as well. A divorce! I should not wonder if the Mercers’ Guild asks him to withdraw his membership
and then he will have nothing, nothing! You shall have utterly ruined him.’

‘He will have King Edward’s protection if he bothers to come to his senses,’ I replied sternly, but I was glad that Shore had unstoppered his feelings to someone. ‘However, perhaps you’d care to recall my unhappiness over the last ten years, Margery.’

‘Oh, you mean being childless?’

I did not argue. There was much I had not told her, like my attempts to free myself lawfully from my marriage or of the time when I had almost taken my own life.

‘So what would you do in my shoes, Meg?’ I challenged. ‘Refuse the King of England to please the Mercers’ Guild?’

‘Pah, throw that at me, Elizabeth Lambard!’ Her plump hands writhed on her broad lap. ‘As if that could happen to me. I haven’t the face and figure to be frivolous like you, and I have my children to consider.’

Frivolous? Did I not run the business of four silkwomen? Did I not help Shore with his shop? And Meg had a nursemaid and a wetnurse to help her.

‘If I had children, Meg, we would not be having this quarrel.’

Alys broke into the uncomfortable silence with a different approach. Widening her lovely blue eyes, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, Lizbeth darling, you are such a sly puss, and there we all thought it was Ralph the Younger who was tempting you. How did all this come about? Is King Edward as good a lover as they say? Do tell. Is he …’ She measured the air, palms facing each other. ‘Or …?’ Her hands moved wider apart.

‘Alys!’ Margery turned an unpleasant scarlet.

‘Since what you are referring to was covered in a golden sheath embroidered with leopards, Alys, I really cannot— Oh look at your face. As if that was true. And as if I should tell you.’

‘I have to go.’ Margery stood up. ‘I cannot wish you well,
Elizabeth. I know some may think it a great honour for you to be admired by the King but you are another man’s wife and it is still adultery when all is said and done. You will both go to Hell for it. And now I take my leave. I doubt our paths will cross again.’

‘What if they do, Meg?’ I answered, steely and hiding my hurt.

‘Then I shall look through you, Elizabeth. I shall not see you.’

This could not be happening. My beloved friend kicking me aside.

‘Please, Margery,’ I exclaimed, following her to the door. ‘You can’t mean this. After all these years …’

She did not even turn her head as she left.

There are other Deadly Sins beside Lust, I thought in retaliation: Envy, Anger, Sloth.

‘Well, I had better go, too,’ announced Alys, delivering a reproachful look at me for being so secretive. ‘Of course, Mother says you will always be welcome to come next door when I’m visiting, Elizabeth, but she’d prefer you to come by the back postern.’ She seemed unaware she had just insulted me. But I wasn’t sure. At the threshold, she turned with unfulfilled hunger.

‘Elizabeth, is he—’

‘He is magnanimous and magnificent, Alys.’

‘Oh.’

What else could she say?

As if losing friends was insufficient punishment, my next visitors were my family’s rector from St Olave’s and the priest of St Mary Aldermary – Shore’s parish church – both anxious to persuade this stray lamb to consort no longer with the wicked wolves of Westminster. To my unspoken horror, they threatened excommunication.