Mistress to the Crown (16 page)

‘Does that apply to the King’s grace as well?’ I asked sweetly, as I rose to broom them out.
Their visit deeply affected Mama, who, despite her questioning intelligence, possessed a strong faith. Could things get worse? Would Mama summon Will from Oxford to purify me? Would Jack ever speak to me again? He and Father were avoiding the guild meetings and, worst of all, because I had received no fresh message from Ned. Father had begun to believe my future as a royal favourite was a fantasy.

Guilt, my humourless inner magistrate, took its place on the bench. By day it admonished me on how my fall from grace had harmed those I loved. At night it proved a snoring bedfellow; keeping me awake, and when I supposed I had shaken it to silence, it would produce another loud snort of judgment.

Just when I began to doubt my sanity, fearful my family might throw me out, Master Myddelton reappeared with an invitation. Wondrous news – except I was bidden to wear my oldest clothes.

Mama was relieved but not impressed. ‘I hate to say it, my love, but I haven’t been standing by you in the teeth of a tempest so you can swish out the palace privies. He’s not got odd fancies, has he? Some men like shoes, you know and …’

I could not enlighten her but I took Ned at his word.

Unhappy in my shabby musterdevillers – imagine a drab grey November sky – I followed Master Myddelton past Ned’s guards into his private bedchamber. My lover was securing his hair into a tail while his attendants unrobed him.

‘Heigh, here’s trust and obedience.’ England’s sovereign lord beamed at my apparel and called out to someone behind him. ‘First wager won, Tom.’

‘Am I to be reduced to scrubbing doorsteps?’ I asked, spreading my skirts as I curtsied in the doorway.

‘All fours?’ His grin was villainous. ‘That’s for later.’ He strode across to a lidded pannier that stood upon the small table, and the four noblemen, who were struggling to divest him of his
mille-fleurs
doublet and tapered, embroidered shoes, moved with him. A fifth man, whom I recognised with dismay – Paris, the Marquis of Dorset – turned from arranging the heavy collar of sunnes and roses on the back of a cross-legged chair. He regarded me with a supercilious smile before he raised a mocking eyebrow at his stepfather and carried across the gooseturd leather jerkin that had been lying on the bed coverlet.

‘See, Jane,’ exclaimed my lover, sliding his arms into the laced-on sleeves. ‘I’ve had a bellyful of being agreeable to people indoors all day, raising money for the campaign,
et cetera
, so we are going fishing.’

‘
F-Fishing
?’ Fishing? Skating? Helen of Troy! Next thing he would want me to be a steeplejack.

‘Aha!’ He was trying to decipher my expression. ‘Putting a good face on it, are you, Jane?’

Lord! I was trying to remember fishing ventures with my brothers.

‘Then you’ll be after perch?’ I hazarded. ‘And there’ll be plenty of worms after last night’s rain.’ I inspected the cluster of rods leaning against the carved settle. ‘I have not fished since I was this high.’

‘And you’ve hardly grown since,’ Ned jested. ‘Which rod do you want?’

‘She’ll choose yours, of course.’

I ignored Dorset’s coarseness. There were five rods to choose from. I selected the smallest, best for my height, and flicked it. Then I tested the next tallest. It was far more supple. ‘This is better,’ I declared. The lower section felt like willow and there was probably the usual hazel insert, but the upper section had a wonderful springiness. ‘Is this blackthorn?’

‘It is!’ Ned grabbed me up and whirled me. ‘Excellent. I win the second wager as well, Tom.’

‘You supposed I could not fish, my lord Marquis?’ I asked Dorset as I landed back on my feet deliriously happy. After ten years of William Shore, Ned’s exuberance was sheer delight.

Behind Ned’s back, Dorset strived for indifference.

‘Could not, would not. Most courtesans care too much about their fine clothes. Clearly you don’t mind getting
dirty
. Your leave to go, Ned?’

A waggle of fingers from the King, and the Queen’s son left us with a mocking bow. To report to his mother? I hoped not; I had sufficient enemies, and that was just among my friends.

IV

In my innocence I imagined a modest long boat followed by a second vessel of bodyguards, thorny with weapons. I was wrong: roped along the quay lay the royal barge, glowing with torches and bristling with oarsmen. Fishing in
that
?

Ned ushered me up the plank and turned impatiently. ‘Where’s Myddelton? Be a good fellow and tell her if she’s not here within sixty heartbeats, we are going without her.’

Jesu! A fishing triangle? But it was not the Queen he meant, thank God. A leggy young girl in an aproned gown came bounding down the steps. She sprang aboard and joined us in the barge’s pavilion.

‘This is Bess, my eldest, my child of Aquarius,’ declared her proud father, tugging her ribboned plait. ‘Poppet, this lady’s name is Elizabeth, too, but we shall call her Jane.’

The ten-year-old princess proved to be a happy soul, neither precocious nor prying, so I was spared the jabs and digs that could have come my way. Watching her freckled face concentrating hard as she strung her rod made me sad that I had no child of my own. Was it possible I could conceive a child to Ned?

‘Gathering cobwebs?’ He clicked his fingers in front of my eyes.

‘Something like that,’ I smiled.

Fishing for perch was a serious business for Ned. We did not talk much once the barge halted beyond Lambeth Palace. Together with Bess and two of his henchmen, we climbed into the small boat that had been tethered at the stern. The King himself grasped the oars and sent us upriver. Bess trailed her fingers in the water and laughed in delight to see a heron take flight from the reeds.

I daresay most people count themselves fortunate if they experience euphoria once in their lives, let alone count those times on their fingers. I could have died that night off Chelsea Reach for I was so utterly at peace. The wash of water lapping at our little kingdom, the tiny beacons of light on the shore as the cottagers lit their candles, the warm laughter of the oarsmen floating across to us from the barge, the glorious sky a map of golden coasted islands at first and then a heavenly river of hazy stars – simple joys. But none so great as the joyfulness that came from the quiet king in our midst as he helped his daughter thread her hook or glimpsed the bob-bob of the float as the perch prepared to bite.

I shall keep that evening like a dried flower in the pages of my memory to treasure always. For a few hours I had a family of my own, even if Ned and Bess were borrowed.

God pardon this if arrogance it be, but I felt His absolution, the faith to believe that this was right.

Ignoring the evil midges, we sat out on the water for two hours with only a couple of goodly fish to make it worthwhile, but afterwards there was wine and sweetmeats by torchlight as the barge carried us back to Westminster.

After delivering Bess to her nurse, waiting at the gate, Ned took me by my hand and we went back to his apartments. Then he led me through a door behind the arras in his private bedchamber
into a hell of steam and heat that made me squeal in shock – a bathhouse with a furnace. Hot water was gushing into the cloth-padded, stone bath and two sweating menservants came at once to loosen the laces of Ned’s gypon.

‘Leave us,’ I exclaimed. ‘I shall wait upon his highness.’

Ned dismissed them to please me.

‘“I shall wait upon his highness”,’ he mimicked. ‘Tell me honestly, you conniving wench, is it because you do not want to unrobe in front of my servants?’

‘Partly. However …’ I adventured my hand across his prick before I loosened the laces that held his hose. Ned had a delightful rich growl. He let me peel down his hose and pull his shirt over his head and then he shoved me backwards.

Water flooded up my nose and open mouth and I flailed in panic until a strong hand hauled me up by the neck of my gown and I surfaced spluttering in his arms.

He laughed at me, sank under and then surfaced with his hair sticking to his forehead like a painted statue’s.

‘An ancient thing, this, but I love it. Three hundred years old and patched like a miser’s elbows. Old Henry III may have been a numbskull at keeping his barons in line, but he enjoyed his luxuries.’

The perfumed water lapped above the swell of my breasts. I turned about, marvelling at my billowing skirt and how my hair floated like ribbon grass.

‘Heigh, sweetheart, have you never been to a bathhouse?’

‘When I was little. Mama used to take me and my friends to the one in Farringdon, but it closed during the pestilence in ‘64.’ My head must have listed like a spent poppy head for Ned put a finger beneath my chin.

‘And suddenly you are sad. What’s the matter, my Jane?’

‘The same friends shun me now. Because I’m here with you.’

Shore would have chided me for a galloping imagination, but Ned’s face held pity.

‘Be patient,’ he advised me, with a shrug of his magnificent shoulders. ‘Had my share of betrayals, too. I tried making peace with the Beauforts and they kicked me in the teeth for it. As for my cousin, Warwick …’ He grimaced. ‘And there’s always my Judas brother, George, who delights in spreading rumours that I’m the son of a Flemish archer! Yes, such talk can scar, like a torch thrust in your face, Jane, but, heigh, here we are, you and I. Let them suffer in their envy.

‘Believe me, sweetheart, you will make many new friends from now on. Will Hastings, for instance, salt of the earth!’ He kissed my furrowed forehead, and swung round to the stopcocks behind him. ‘Some more hot water, eh? And I’ll have that gown off you, you witch, see whether you float or sink.’

He made short work of unrobing me and long work of making love in that glorious warm water.

When we finally climbed forth onto the tiles, I had never felt so clean in my life even though I am fastidious about such matters. My king helped me wring my long hair and wound a soft towel about my head in pagan fashion, then we fell asleep together on his featherbed.

I awoke next morning alone and my sleepy calm turned into instant pother. Searching the bathchamber, I discovered my clothes had vanished, whisked away with the spent towels. Here was a fix. I opened the servants’ door and peered out onto an unlit passageway that led to a stairwell. Were there guards below? I called out but no one came.

No gown, no comb. I could hardly hobble for help in a sheet nor dared I venture through to the Painted Chamber. That would be shameful. I resigned myself to wait until Ned’s ushers came to make up the bed, but then I heard Ned arguing with someone in the middle chamber. It was not a voice I recognised.

‘For Christ’s sake, Ned!’ the other man was saying. ‘Either Richard or I should be regent while you are in France and I am the oldest. Besides, Richard won’t stay home. He’s been itching for years to grab the French by the ballocks.’

‘No!’ There was a silence as though Ned was trying to buckle his temper. ‘Need I say it again, George! I want an appearance of unity when we confront Louis. He needs to know you stand firm with me
– for once
.’

I drew a sharp breath. God protect me! I should not be hearing any of this.
George
? Could this visitor be the treacherous Duke of Clarence, who had allied with Warwick and driven Ned out of England?

‘But you need to leave a regent in England, damn it! What if you get slain or held for ransom? Remember King Hal, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Death from chronic flux, brother? Oh, you’d like that.’

‘No, let’s leave feelings out of this and think like princes, shall we? Louis would love to see you skewered, and who would stand protector for your son in that event? Dear Elizabeth? Over my dead body!’

‘Christ, George! We shall only be across the Channel not down in Jerusalem. Anyway, I have no intention of getting hit by an arrow, dysentery or—’

‘The French disease?’ The sarcasm was poisonous. Silence and then this duke spurred in for another swipe. ‘Supposing the Scots decide to break the truce? If every English lord is over in France with you, who the hell is going to withstand them? If I was King James, I’d be champing at the bit.’

Ned did not answer.

The verbal circling might go on forever. I rattled the ring handle as a warning before I opened the door a span width. Ned, in just his dressing robe, was standing at the window, his hands
were on his thighbones and his head was thrown back as if his brother’s presence starved the chamber of air.

His antagonist, a fit, fine-featured man in his twenties with light brown hair neat beneath a cream velvet cap, was sprawled in the carved chair, very much at home, an ankle resting on the opposite knee. Cheveril-gloved fingers toyed with the pendant bull upon his great gilded collar and a smirk serifed his mouth; clearly he was enjoying the sport of brother baiting. He looked round angrily at the disturbance.

‘Who’s this? The latest bed-warmer?’

‘No, my lord,’ I replied, much put out. If Ned did not like this man, why should I? My glance fell on the shabby footstool. ‘I’m his grace’s new counsellor on furnishings, and footstools in particular. CLOTHES?’ I mouthed at my sovereign liege. Ned sucked in his cheeks and was trying not to splutter.

George, Duke of Clarence glanced from Ned to me. His irritation subsided.

‘Footstools?’ he mocked. ‘Old Nursie’s footstool?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ I replied sternly. ‘One has to take into account the amount of sunlight and whether his highness may come in wet shod. The dyes must be of the best.’

‘Jane,’ murmured Ned, striding across to me and setting his hands about my sheeted waist, ‘if you do not hold your tongue, I shall die from laughter and my brother here will be so glad.’

O Jesu! So his visitor was the weathervane of the family.

‘I’ faith,’ murmured the duke, rising to his feet to inspect me, ‘maybe I could use some advice on footstools, brother. Does she suck toes as well as lick your soles? Pray, come further in, woman, and discuss your terms. I’ll pay you more.
No
? Alas, Ned, your adviser seems somewhat coy now.’