The Innocent (29 page)

Quickly, Anne found her way back to her companions and hurried with them out of the hall and up to the queen’s rooms overlooking the river, as servitors gathered up the scraps of the meal that would be taken away to the palace gates and given to the poor.

Issuing instructions over her shoulder, Jehanne rushed into the queen’s robing rooms. “Dorcas, find me a fresh linen shift. Jane, hurry now, bring the russet velvet, and the green as well. Gloves, where were they put…Evelyn! Don’t just stand there—water, get the water. And Rose, you help her, two ewers apiece mind, and hot. Anne, keep silent and learn.”

On the heels of this breathless speech the queen swept into the robing room, surrounded by other magnificently dressed women chattering brightly in French. Among them was her mother, Duchess Jacquetta, and two of her younger sisters. Jehanne bobbed a curtsy with the ease of an old and trusted servant, and calmly moved forward accompanied by Jane carefully carrying a trailing gown of russet velvet, the color of fallen oak leaves, which she draped becomingly over a large settle.

“What’s this?” The queen frowned at Jehanne. “I said I wanted to wear the green velvet today.”

“Aye, Your Majesty. We have that too. Jane!” And the girl hurried forward again, this time cradling another gown made of deep, verdant green, the underskirt fashioned from panels of red and cream damask.

The queen looked at the dress and then walked very slowly over to Jane. The room fell silent; there was something in the queen’s face that held them riveted with formless dread. “Jehanne. Come here. Look.”

The older woman peered carefully at where the queen’s finger was pointing. “Who is responsible for this?” There was a groat-sized fleck of mud on the hem of the underskirt and the queen’s voice was ominously soft.

“I am, Your Grace,” said Jehanne quietly. “It shall be seen to immediately.”

Once, twice, the queen hit Jehanne across the face with her open hand, the rings on her fingers drawing blood in long scratches. “Too late,” said Elizabeth Wydeville casually.

Anne stood in silent shock, as did everyone in that room, though there was a rush of indrawn breath.

“So, I shall wear the russet, but this will not happen again.”

The older woman shook her head as, with steady fingers, she began to unlace the back of the queen’s silver and purple gown.

“Will you wash, Your Majesty?” she asked in a voice that was rock calm.

“No.”

Rose and Evelyn backed quietly out of the room, doing their best not to slop the water in their ewers, as the other women crowded around the queen, exclaiming how well the russet gown would set off the color of her skin. Stoically, Jehanne removed the silver cauls and the crown and brushed out the queen’s hair to its full length, which made Anne gasp. It fell nearly to her feet in a mass of fine crimped gold.

“You, girl. Come here.” The queen was talking to Anne. “Are you blind as well as deaf?” The edge in Elizabeth’s voice was dangerous. Hastily, Jehanne seized Anne by the arm and dragged her forward to the queen, where some blessed reflex made the girl drop to a deep curtsy. “Here, look at this…”

Anne looked up warily. Elizabeth had a handful of her own hair and was holding it up to the light.

“See, here—and here. It’s darkening. It’ll be tow-colored soon.” She was right. Looked at closely, the fine strands were not uniform in color at all—especially near to the head where they were noticeably darker.

“Well, daughter, you’ve had three children now. It’s well known that childbirth darkens yellow hair…”

Elizabeth froze her mother with a look and Duchess Jacquetta shut her mouth with an audible snap. The queen then turned back to Anne. “Well? What do you say?”

Anne dared to speak. “There is a wash I can make, Your Majesty. I believe it may prevent the hair from darkening further.” Anne looked up and the words dried in her throat, constricted by fear; the queen’s eyes were very cold.

“Very well. I shall accompany the king hawking after he has seen the ambassador from Burgundy.

When I return you will apply this wash and we shall see. Jehanne!”

There was an immediate flurry to dress the queen in the russet velvet gown and hide the offending hair under a gold silk padded turban the size of a small pumpkin, bound with silver wire and tied upon her head and under her chin by trailing green ribbon. As the six serving maids helped Jehanne lace and array the queen, Anne marveled at Elizabeth’s body. It really was firm and slender, delicate breasts and arms, and a little, softly rounded belly like an inverted bowl. Truly God had given the queen many natural advantages over other women. Then as the chattering mass of court ladies trailed out of the robing room in the queen’s wake, leaving the body servants to restore order, Jehanne gingerly touched her cheek. The queen’s rings had cut down almost to one cheekbone.

“Come—no time for chatter. Anne, gather the linen and please search through the larger coffer for mending to be done. Jane, make sure that no mite of mud remains on the green gown. Brush and cleanse it well.” A brief fierce look hit home and Jane had the grace to blush. It had been her inattention that had caused the outburst from the queen. “Rose, Dorcas, Lily, dust everything, and these tiles will need waxing again, please. Evelyn, alert the laundresses that we may need their services also. Go now.”

The girls worked silently and quickly, nobody brave enough to offer Jehanne assistance, but there was an undertone of things not said in the room that Anne could feel. Under Jehanne’s watchful eye all was made neat, and finally she declared their work was done. The chamber was burnished and smelled sweetly of wax and the last white roses and gillyflowers from the palace gardens that Jehanne had arranged in a silver jug.

“Very well. Rose, there are the three silk shifts to be mended. That will take all your time until we must change the queen for supper. The rest of you may now go, and I shall inspect that purgatory you call a sleeping chamber before the nones bell rings.”

Quietly, the others filed out and Anne waited to be spoken to. Now, at last, Dame Jehanne allowed herself to sigh, and with a grimace, touched her cheekbone. “What do you need to make the wash for the queen’s hair, Anne?”

“I have everything except lemons, Dame Jehanne. I shall need juice from quite a number because the queen’s hair is so long and thick.”

“Very well, we shall see what we can do.” The old lady seemed to be taking her time now, carefully smoothing the counterpane of the queen’s bed with Anne’s help, almost as if she wanted to delay the girl’s leaving. “Now…tell me something of yourself. How long did you serve Lady Margaret Cuttifer?”

In telling her history at Blessing House, Anne, being young, told Jehanne more than she thought she did, though she was careful to be discreet about her former employers.

“You were brought up in forest lands, did you say?” Jehanne was unexpectedly sharp with the question and startled Anne.

“Yes, I was…”

At this answer, the old lady abruptly waved her hands to indicate the conversation was finished. It was almost as if she could bear to hear no more, which puzzled Anne. Why had she upset Jehanne? She’d seemed so interested a moment ago. Perhaps she was in pain. The older woman had turned away from her now. Anne spoke quickly, before she lost the nerve. “Will you let me help, Dame Jehanne? I could clean the cut on your cheek?”

Jehanne turned, dignified. “That is kind but I shall just use a little warm wine. That will be quite sufficient.” And since, clearly, Jehanne did not want her sympathy—or her help—Anne said no more as the two women left the queen’s rooms to their unaccustomed silence.

Chapter Twenty

Dank, darkening October had turned to November and now cold flurries of sleet-ridden wind off the river made for a bleak morning as William Hastings, the king’s closest friend and palace chamberlain, finalized plans to move the court to Windsor for the Christmas Court.

He was looking forward to the change, though it meant a great deal of work for his office. It was a fact that most courtiers liked Windsor more than London, for even though the castle was still a formidable fortress, it seemed more intimate somehow than the great drafty barracks of Westminster. Hastings was determined to make this Christmas Court as merry as possible to distract the king from the increasing tension of his relationship with Warwick. And if it was true, as was rumored, that the queen might be pregnant again, then there would be double cause for the king to celebrate, and his court with him.

So there was much to do, and most mornings found William out of his bed before dawn, even though the evening revels rarely finished until the dead part of the night. A monk once told him that if he wished to banish the aftereffects of wine, he should drink as much water as he could before he slept.

This advice had sounded like certain suicide, because everyone knew that London water was foul and a potent source of contagion since so much filth poured into the Thames. But this clever monk had added good advice. “Boil it first, sir, boil it and have the steam condensed off the pot with a cold metal plate.

That is what you must drink—the water from the steam. It is very pure.” So it had proved, and while there were those who scoffed and said that drinking water was a sure way to the Devil, that’s what William put his lack of headaches down to—drinking his metal water.

This cold morning he sat in his room in the fine new black-and-white house at Saint Paul’s wharf, less than ten minutes down-river from the palace by fast barge, comparatively clearheaded, while a constant stream of court servants ran in and out with papers for him to sign: bills of instruction and command that would put the court on the muddy roads and autumn river to Windsor within the next few days. But for now there was a lull and the chamberlain stretched mightily and strolled over to his casements dressed only in his hose and linen undershirt, casually scratching the recent flea bites on his belly.

Thoughts chased through his head as he looked down on the gray silent river rushing past below. The queen didn’t like him, that he knew, but then, what wife liked her husband’s best friend? They’d had a history together, he and Elizabeth Wydeville, before she married the king. When she’d been plain, widowed Lady Elizabeth Grey, her husband’s meager lands had marched with his and he’d had occasion to help her with preserving her son Thomas’s inheritance from her dead husband’s grasping mother, the dowager Lady Grey. But perhaps he’d extracted too high a price for his services and that underlaid her hostile feelings for him now.

As Lady Elizabeth Grey she’d signed an indenture that if either Hastings or his brother Ralph had a daughter within five years of their agreement, she was bound to marry her son, when of age, to this girl, or forfeit five hundred marks—a large sum for a widow in tight circumstances. She’d not liked signing that deed, but at the time it had made good business sense. Quid pro quo. But then, if he allowed himself to be honest, he’d known that he had had the best of the bargain at the time.

And for all her beauty, her flesh had not tempted him, so he’d not been swayed from good business by that obvious appeal. She’d seen that when she’d tried to soften the contract conditions and she’d not liked it at all. And she’d never forgotten it. Strange how the great wheel turned.

He walked away from the window, sighing. Their agreement had been made little more than a month before the now-famous secret wedding, and he would swear that, even then, she’d not known just how much things were about to change.

He was aware of the king’s lust for her, of course, but thought it would pass as it always had—perhaps, in the end, to the lady’s advantage. But Elizabeth and her formidable mother, the widowed former Duchess of Bedford, daughter of the Count of Saint Pol—who’d later so scandalously married Lord Wydeville—had played the king well. Elizabeth must have finessed the virtue card; there was no other explanation. She would not be his whore—if he wanted what was between her legs, Edward would have to marry her.

So there’d been the secret wedding on the night of April 30; the witches’ sabbat said those who wished the queen ill—and they were many. Scandalmongers wittered that she and her mother must have bewitched the king. The even more credulous pointed out that Elizabeth and Edward had first met under an oak tree and oak groves were haunted by black rites still, in the minds of many. William Hastings thought it all so much nonsense. He shook his head impatiently—he was a modern man. The king was led by his privates, it was simple as that. Certainly the great rise of the Wydevilles after Elizabeth had got the ring on her finger was extraordinary. But witchcraft? No, the woman had an amazingly fair body for one near thirty and an angelic face. And a tongue like a stabbing sword, which he knew now to his cost.

Yes, the wheel had turned and if he was to protect Edward, guard his back, he’d have to step carefully.

The queen had been politically weakened lately by the birth of her daughter, but if she was pregnant again the die of the succession was in play once more and his own position would be strengthened, or weakened, by the sex of that coming child.

Hastings shook these troublesome thoughts away with something much more pleasant: the king’s entertainment must be particularly fine during the Christmas Court at Windsor. Perhaps, as well, it was time to send his own wife, Catherine, back to their estates, because she, too, was pregnant and surely would not enjoy the rowdiness and the late nights.

He was honest enough to smile slightly at the lie he so conveniently told himself. Catherine would have liked to go to Windsor, but if she did, he would not be free to accompany the king in his enjoyments without reproach. His wife was a good woman, a good breeder, and he was very fond of her, but she had more than a small share of her brother the Earl of Warwick’s formidable temperament, and rage at his little enjoyments would be certain to harm the child she was carrying. He’d bring her round to his way of thinking. Somehow.

He dismissed the thought of the confrontation to come. The time had fled while he’d been ruminating; he’d have to move fast to be dressed and into his barge to get to the palace before Edward awoke. It was important, for his continuing political dominance at court, that he be the first man Edward spoke to each morning, that he heard how the king was thinking, for that first conversation always had a bearing on the king’s humor for the rest of the day—and on how his own influence might affect events at court.