The King's Mistress (22 page)

John smiled. “A good thought.”

“Where will we stay the night?” Jane asked, brushing bread crumbs from her lap.

“Round about Tamworth. I don’t know whether to chance an inn. We don’t look like the sort who should have the money for such lodgings.”

It was true, Jane thought, looking at her brother. His clothes were those of a rough country fellow, coarse brown wool breeches and coat over a battered leather jerkin, with his cloak draped over all. He wore heavy yarn stockings and shoes with hobnails in their soles, and his felt hat was battered and shapeless. Jane was dressed much the same. She had found a voluminous shirt that would not show her shape even with nothing over it, but it was covered by a woollen waistcoat and a heavy skirted coat in dark green that muffled any hint of a bosom or waist and fell to below her knees. She wore the rough woollen stockings Nurse had knitted for her and stout shoes. She had not quite been able to bring herself to cut off her hair, so she had stuffed it under a tight-fitting cap and clapped a grey slouch hat over it.

“We might see if we can pay for supper and a place on the floor with cottagers,” John said. “Though we’re still close enough to home that I would be more comfortable did we not have to speak to anyone if we can avoid it. If we can find a barn or other shelter, it would be the safest thing for tonight. I have oiled canvas to rig a tent if we can find no place indoors. How are your feet? Can you keep walking for some time?”

“Yes,” Jane said, thinking of the Roman soldiers.

“Brave girl.” He smiled, and standing, reached out a hand to help her to her feet.

T
HE SKY DARKENED AS THE DAY DREW TOWARDS DUSK
. E
VERY PART
of Jane’s body ached, and a chill wind rattled through the trees and bushes along the road. She longed for hot food and a soft bed, and braced herself for the possibility that they might have to sleep on the bare ground if no shelter offered.

“There should be a village not far ahead,” John said, looking up from his little book of maps. “We’ll stop there.”

The village was little more than a cluster of houses and a church, but lamplight and voices spilled from the doorway of a tiny alehouse.

“What do you think?” Jane said, her stomach growling at the smell of food.

“I think we can venture in for a meal,” John said. “But the less said the better. Son,” he added, grinning.

Six or eight men in the rough clothes of farmers were gathered at a couple of tables in the tavern, and they ceased their talk as John and Jane entered. Jane was keenly conscious of their eyes on her. Could they tell she was a woman? It was dark in the little taproom and her coat stood out from her body, but still she feared they would discover her.

“Good even, friends,” John said, and Jane nodded to the strangers. She thanked God for John’s presence. He was a big man and moved with the authority and bearing of a soldier, and she was sure most men would think twice before starting trouble with him.

“And you, friends,” one of the men answered, and the others murmured their greetings.

“My boy and I have had a long day of walking,” John said. “And would welcome a whet and a meal.”

Jane was relieved that none of the men seemed to recognise John or question his description of her as a boy.

“Then you’ve stopped at the right place,” said a barrel-chested man with sparse grey hair, moving towards the bar with its mugs and barrels. “There’s stew and the finest brown ale you’ll find for many a mile.”

His grin reassured Jane, and she gave him a smile as she unslung the heavy bag from her shoulders.

The hot stew, as well as the loaf of brown bread and the pint of honey-coloured ale, were good, and she gave them her attention and let John do the talking.

“Where have you come from?” asked the landlord. “And what news?”

“From near Wolverhampton,” John said. “No news there but the old news—soldiers everywhere, and all in uproar.”

“It’s the same everywhere, we hear,” nodded a little man with a pocked face. “Looking for the king, under every bush and haystack.”

With studied innocence, he whistled a few bars of “The World Turned Upside Down”. The words most usually heard to the tune in recent years were “When the King Enjoys His Own Again”. John carried on with the tune, and the atmosphere in the room relaxed perceptibly.

“Confusion to Oliver,” said the publican, raising his mug. “And good health to the king.”

“Good health to the king,” John agreed, and Jane murmured, “The king,” pitching her voice low.

“Where are you and the lad bound?” a little bald-headed man in a tattered brown coat asked.

“Near Desford way,” John said. “My sister’s man died, and we go to help her settle his business and bring her back home again.”

Murmurs of sympathy arose, and the publican refilled their mugs.

“We’ve need of a place to sleep for the night, if you’ve a room.”

“The room we sit in is all there is,” the publican said, “but I’ve a couple of pallets we can lay before the fire.”

“We’ll take it and gladly.” John nodded.

After another hour of talk, the men drifted home, and the publican closed and barred the door and laid out two straw-stuffed pallets before climbing the stairs to his own bed. Jane rolled herself in her blanket, clothed except for her shoes, and was asleep almost as soon as she was settled.

J
ANE AND
J
OHN WERE ON THEIR WAY EARLY
. J
ANE HAD SLEPT SURPRISINGLY
well for the roughness of the accommodation, and with each mile they moved eastward and closer to escape, her spirits rose. They walked through Tamworth, a market town huddled around a castle on the riverbank. No one appeared to take undue notice of them, and the road once more passed between open fields. It was colder than it had been the day before, and Jane’s shoes were chafing at her heels.

“Let me stop a few minutes so I can tend to my feet,” she said.

She sat on a fallen tree and pulled off her shoes and stockings to find that her heels were blistered and angry red. She had brought a little pot of salve, and smeared it onto the blisters.

“A bit of lambs wool should help,” John said. “Here, let me fix it for you.”

His big hands moved surely and tenderly as he laid soft pads of wool against the chafed spots and tied them in place with strips of linen. Jane watched him, thinking again how grateful she was for his presence. She fitted her silk stockings over the bandaging before putting on her heavy wool stockings and shoes, and John helped her to her feet.

“How’s that?”

“Better,” she said, standing and trying her weight on alternate feet.

They filled their leather bottle from the river and drank of the cool water before setting forth once again. It was late afternoon when Jane heard the rumble of horses’ hooves on the road behind them, and turning, saw a blur of churning red in the distance. A cavalry patrol. She glanced around in a panic. The fields on either side of the road offered no hiding place.

“Nothing for it but to keep on, and bluff it out if they should stop us,” John said, his eyes narrowing as he squinted into the sun to watch the soldiers.

They moved to the side of the road, and Jane prayed that the patrol would pass on. Her stomach clutched in fear when the hoofbeats slowed.

“Hold, there!” a voice called, and the lead rider, an officer whose face was almost as red as his coat, rode past them and then wheeled his horse back to face them. Jane glanced around. Another half-dozen mounted soldiers were behind them. They were trapped.

“Where are you bound?” the officer demanded.

“Near Leicester, sir.” John’s voice was slow and even, as untroubled as a farmer on his way to a holiday fair.

“Your business?”

“Well, sir, I’m taking my boy here to be apprentice to a silversmith.”

The officer squinted at Jane and frowned. “He looks old to be starting an apprenticeship. How old are you, boy?”

“Six-sixteen, sir.” Jane thought she managed to keep her voice level.

“You’re right, sir,” John said, shaking his head as though in despair. “He is old, at that. But the silversmith wanted a bond, you know, for the lad’s food and lodging and clothes, and all he might need, come to that, and well, I’ve been sore pressed to scrape together what he asked for. We had a bad harvest last year. The oats weren’t so bad, now, but the wheat—”

“Never mind about the wheat, fellow,” the officer barked. “Have you seen a lady, her hair brown to reddish, tall and fair, perhaps five and twenty years of age? She might be riding with a man, an inch or two below six feet, with brown hair and blue eyes?”

“Faith, no sir.”

I heard myself proclaimed …

The line from
King Lear
ran through Jane’s mind. It scarcely seemed real. The officer’s eyes snapped to Jane’s face and she felt her palms start to sweat.

“And you, boy?”

… No port is free, no place

Does not attend my taking.

The other riders had circled close in around them now, the horses snorting and pacing restlessly.
They know,
Jane thought.
They know it’s me, and I’m going to hang.
She thought of Francis Yates’s livid face, the terror in his bulging eyes as he jerked frantically at the end of the rope.

“No, sir.” Her voice was scarce above a whisper, and she kept her eyes on the ground.

“Look at me!” the red-faced officer snarled. Jane felt John bracing himself beside her, as though for a fight. But it wouldn’t be much of a fight, she thought. He would be lucky to get his pistol from beneath his coat before he was shot.

“Are you simple, boy?” the officer prodded. “I say, are you simple? Look at me, boy!”

He rode around them in a tight circle. Had he seen that she was a girl? Jane willed her heart to be still and raised her eyes to look into his face, streaked with sweat and the dust of the road. He smelled her fear, like a dog, and she must throw him off the scent somehow.

“No, sir. It’s only—could I be a soldier, sir?”

She hadn’t planned what to say, and her words astonished her. John and the soldiers appeared to be equally amazed. Then the officer burst out laughing.

“You?” He spat on the ground and his men guffawed. “The Protector would be scraping the bottom of the barrel indeed, to take such a milk-faced weed as thee, boy.” He turned back to John, sneering. “Quite the fire-eater your boy thinks he is.”

John nodded, and Jane knew that the befuddled expression on his face was unfeigned.

The red-faced officer sighed wearily, as though the encounter had taxed his patience to the limit and beyond. He clicked to his horse and began to move off, and just when Jane was about to breathe a sigh of relief, he turned back towards them again.

“I almost forgot. You’ll not have seen a tall black-haired fellow, six feet two inches high? He’s—he’s a gentleman, but he might be disguised as someone of meaner birth?”

“No, sir,” John said. “No one like that.”

“Nor I, sir,” Jane piped up. “What’s he done, sir? Is he a highwayman?”

The soldiers exchanged looks and laughed.

“No. Not a highwayman.” The officer shook his head and spurred his horse, and the patrol clattered off, clods of mud flying behind them.

Jane forced herself to remain on her feet until the riders were out of sight. Then she sat down heavily on the road, her belly heaving, and vomited onto the damp earth.

T
HE TERROR OF THE ENCOUNTER WITH THE SOLDIERS HAD LEFT
J
ANE
feeling drained. She wondered where Henry was and whether she would ever see him again. The blisters on her feet had broken and every step was painful. She wanted only to stop, to rest, to hide and feel safe, but she knew that the only way to reach safety was to keep moving forward, so she shut her mind to her fear and discomfort and thought of Roman soldiers.

The sun was low on the horizon when they stopped to rest again. John drank deep from the leather bottle and passed it to Jane while he pulled the atlas from his bags and studied it.

“It’s still some miles to the next village. How are your feet?”

“I can keep on,” Jane said.

“The night should be clear,” John said, looking at the cloudless horizon. “My thought is that perhaps it might be better to keep an eye out for some shelter in the open country than go among people. That was a good performance of yours, but now we know they’re looking for you and Henry …”

“Yes,” Jane agreed.

Her stomach contracted again with the panic she had felt at the red-faced officer eyeing her so closely.

They walked on for a mile or two, and John pointed out a small structure a little way off the road. Exploring, they discovered that it was a shepherd’s hut, empty but for the heavy smell of wool and wood smoke. A blackened fire pit lay beneath a hole in the roof.

“Good,” John said. “At least we can have the warmth and light of a fire.”

Jane let her pack fall heavily in a corner of the hut.

“Don’t drop just yet,” John said as she pulled off her coat.

He was rummaging in his bag, and drew forth one of his pistols along with a small leather case and powder horn.

“I want to teach you to shoot,” he said, to Jane’s inquiring glance, and she laughed without humour.

“Perhaps I really can go for a soldier boy, then.”

J
ANE HAD NOT EXAMINED
J
OHN’S PAIR OF PISTOLS CLOSELY BEFORE
. He had bought them at the growing Gun Quarter in the little village of Birmingham, not far from Bentley, and she had heard him speak of their superior manufacture and reliability. They were beautiful, she thought, admiring the silver scrollwork. And big. The barrels were as long as her forearm.

John showed Jane how to load the pistol—put the hammer at half cock, feed the powder and ball and wadding into the barrel, tamp it down with the ramrod—“Always ram it well home, or the barrel could explode,” he warned—and prime the pan with a pinch of powder.

“Now it’s primed and ready. You can carry it like that, so you’re prepared in case of trouble. When you’re ready to fire, you bring it to full cock, like this. You’ll want to practise that a lot. You don’t want to fumble when you need to shoot.”