The King's Mistress (49 page)

I
N MID
-M
AY
J
ANE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM
Q
UEEN
E
LIZABETH
. T
HE
familiar handwriting brought tears to her eyes.

“Now I hear that the coronation is so happily passed, I have no more patience to stay here, but am resolved to go myself to congratulate that happy action. I would not do it before, not to give the king too much trouble at once, except he had commanded me to go, and now I assure you I shall give very little trouble, for I bring with me not above twenty-six or twenty-seven persons.” Jane laughed out loud at the thought of dear Queen Elizabeth and her retinue descending on Whitehall. “I go with a resolution to put myself wholly in his hands, and obey him in all things, and trouble him for nobody. Your most affectionate friend, Elizabeth.”

“I rejoice at Your Majesty’s news,” Jane wrote back. “I am sorry I shall not be in London to welcome you, and I hope that it may be possible that I shall have the pleasure of seeing Your Majesty soon. But be assured, wherever I am in the world, my prayers shall be for Your Majesty and will serve you with my life.”

J
ANE HAD LEFT
L
ONDON WITH THE THOUSAND POUNDS
P
ARLIAMENT
had bestowed on her. She had insisted on paying for the many things which the household at Bentley badly needed—another cow, work on the stables and the orchard—and of course she had brought gifts for her family. But still she had more than enough money to do whatever she wished. So she had given in to her mother’s urging to have a portrait painted, something grand that would hang above the mantel in the great hall. The painter, Mr Rowntree, had come from Stafford and was staying at Bentley Hall while he worked.

They had finished the afternoon’s sitting, and she had come to stand beside the artist to survey the canvas. She was pleased. It showed her in one of the new gowns she had had made in London, rich pearls around her neck. In her hand she held a crown, draped with a veil of filmy black. Rowntree had suggested the idea and she had gone along with it, though the symbolism was perhaps too unsubtle, she thought.

Yes, she had hidden the crown, in the person of the king, thus preserving him and the monarchy. And he had gone on to his kingdom, leaving her behind. Like Dido and Aeneas. A smile suddenly quirked Jane’s lips as an inspiration struck her. She considered. Was it silly? Silly be damned. It was her portrait, she would have it painted to please herself.

“I have an idea,” she said, turning to Rowntree with a catlike smile.

C
LEMENT
F
ISHER WAS TRUE TO HIS WORD
. H
E VISITED
. B
ENTLEY REGULARLY
, but never pressed Jane for more closeness than she could easily give, and let her set the pace. She felt herself relaxing in the warmth of his love as summer came on, and could almost imagine being his wife. Almost. For at the back of her mind lay yet the shadow of Charles. She still dreamed of him, still thought of him almost daily, as she had done for so long. She knew it was foolish. She would not likely see him again, and could not let the ghost of a man who would never be hers rob her of a life with a man of flesh and blood who waited so patiently for her to come to him. She must find a way to let go of Charles, to lay him to rest, but yet she knew not how to do it.

Her birthday came. She was thirty-five. What an age, she thought, laughing that she had considered herself an old maid at twenty-five. And now she really must make up her mind to wed Clement, or release him from all hope, for to continue any longer if she did not mean to marry him would be unfair.
I will give myself until Michaelmas,
she thought.
He gave me so long those ten years ago, and so I will give myself the same length of time, and give him the answer he waited for then and waits for still.

And then, as though he had heard her longing for him, Jane received a letter from Charles.

“As you well know, this third of September shall be the tenth anniversary of the Battle of Worcester and my deliverance. I mean to take the opportunity to visit now in happiness those places where I hid in despair, and thank in person those I could not thank before, and of course you are chief among them whose company I hope to have. My aunt the Queen of Bohemia will accompany me. She declared she would venture to the ends of the earth to see you once more, and until then bids me send you her fond love.”

Jane smiled. Leaving London before Queen Elizabeth’s arrival had been only slightly less painful than her heartbreak over Charles, and she was glad she would see her old friend again.

The king’s advent in Staffordshire was a more momentous event than anything that had happened in the county in living memory or beyond. Every person within a day’s ride, it seemed, had come to see the king and to marvel. His retinue flocked behind him as he made his royal progress through the countryside, visiting in turn each of the houses that had sheltered him. At each of the stops—Whiteladies, Boscobel, Moseley—the crowds watched rapt as the king greeted the legions of people who had taken a part in keeping him safe. The Penderel brothers, who had sequestered him—and his horse—in the house at Whiteladies as dawn rose on the morning after the Battle of Worcester. Dame Joan Penderel, who had brought him food as he sheltered in the woods nearby. Father John Huddleston, who had taken him to Moseley and given him his shirt.

At Boscobel, Charles and Colonel Will Carlis stood smiling beneath the oak tree—now known by all as “the Royal Oak”—where they had spent a day hiding from Cromwell’s troops. Charles gathered up a couple of dozen acorns, putting them in the pockets of his pea-green coat.

“I shall plant these at Hyde Park and in St James’s Park,” he declared, “that in the future I may always have a place of safety in time of need!”

The crowd laughed in delight, and there were calls of “No need for that, Your Majesty!” and “You’re always welcome in Staffordshire, Your Majesty!”

He has a knack for it,
Jane thought, standing companionably beside Queen Elizabeth. She watched the king nod and smile and chat with each of the country folk who had risked their lives for him, watched them beaming in his presence.
He makes each of them feel that they are special to him, that he truly cares and will never forget them. As he made me feel. But when he is back in London in a week’s time? Or even tonight, when he lays his head comfortably to rest after a feast and carousing into the evening, will he give them a second thought? No. And now I am one of them. Just one more of the many, useful to him once upon a time, but now forgotten when the need is past.

H
AVING RETRACED IN SUNLIGHT THE ROUTE ALONG WHICH HE HAD
fled ten years earlier in darkness, Charles arrived at Bentley Hall. The household had trooped along with him, basking in his reflected glory, and now they welcomed him to the house that had been his last hiding place before he set out on his historic odyssey.

“I’d know that kitchen door anywhere!” Charles declared, to a delighted laugh from the little crowd that stood in the stable yard. “I recall as if it were yesterday stumbling through that door bone-tired and frightened, and looking like a scarecrow that had fallen into a pig’s trough.”

“And yet your majesty shone through,” John said, to a pleased murmur.

Jane thought of that night, and her first sight of Charles. She felt again the thrill that had gone through her the next morning when she reached her arms around his waist to steady herself behind him on the horse, the sound of his voice as he spoke low to her over his shoulder, and how her spirits had soared as his voice had joined hers in song while they rode. She thought about that first kiss, so unexpected and overwhelming, in the stable at Long Marston. And the feel of his mouth and hands on her burning skin, the delicious shock as he had entered her, the fierce joy she had felt as she lay in his arms on those nights so long ago. They had been the most exciting days of her life. Her heart wrenched to think how she would have felt had she known that she would be so utterly forgotten after all they had gone through and what they had been to each other.

And then she saw that Charles was looking to her, waiting. She felt the many eyes upon her and flushed. He had spoken, and she had not even heard what he said. He spoke again.

“Will you walk with me, Mistress Lane? I should like to see this famous orchard of which you have told me.”

Jane blinked and found her voice. “Gladly, Your Majesty.”

Charles held out his hand to her, and as she moved to take it, the little crowd surged forward to join them. But Charles held up a hand to stay them.

“I pray you wait for me here. For I would have Mistress Jane alone as my guide.”

He smiled down at Jane as he took her arm in his and led her towards the orchard. Jane could feel the stares and hear the whispers behind them, and remembered how she had thought to hear such whispers at the ball at The Hague the previous spring, and her shock at seeing Barbara Palmer take her place beside Charles.

Now they were among the apple trees, and out of sight and earshot of the crowd. Charles sighed, looking around him at the branches heavy with their fruit.

“I see why you love this place so,” he said. “I understand what you meant when you said that you liked to come here and feel yourself lost in another world, and that you wondered if the fairies were watching you.”

“You remember that?” Jane asked in astonishment.

“Of course,” Charles said. “Why should I not?”

“Because …” Jane stopped. She could not put into words the yearning she had felt for so long.

“I remember it all, Jane. The sight of you trying not to look shocked when I blew in that kitchen door. The feel of you against me in the saddle. The conversations through those dark nights, that lifted my spirits so. The songs.

“Cast care away, let sorrow cease,

A fig for melancholy …”

He pulled Jane towards him and bent to kiss her gently. As she looked into his eyes, the years dropped away. He was hers again. Not the august person of the king, but the Charles with whom she had fallen in love, smiling down at her.

“I thought you had forgotten.”

“I could never forget you. And though no doubt I have done an ill job of showing it, I love you, Jane. In another world …”

He looked away as his words trailed off, and Jane was amazed to see deep sadness in his eyes. He turned to her again.

“As perilous as they were, those days felt to me like the most real and joyful of my life, and it was you with whom I shared them. I had nothing to give you, did nothing but put your life in danger, yet you cared for me. I felt—free. Perhaps that seems odd. But with no end in mind but the saving of my skin, and the threat of death so close, I was truly myself. And you were truly yourself with me. We were as one, and happy. And if I had been any young country lad, free to choose for himself and where his heart lighted, I would have looked no further.”

“Charles.”

Jane put up her hand to stroke his cheek, realising as she did so that it had been years since she had touched him, and how familiar was the feel of his skin beneath her fingers and the scent of him.

“If we were a simple lad and lass, courting in the orchard,” Charles said, “I would ask you for a lock of your hair to carry with me near my heart.”

He let go of Jane’s hands to reach into his pocket, and pulled out a tiny penknife. He held it up, smiling.

“Wilt thou give me a lock of thy hair, sweeting?”

Jane smiled at his use of that most intimate “thou”, now grown old-fashioned, but still the language of lovers.

“I will.”

He carefully snipped a tendril of her hair, wrapped it in a silk handkerchief, and put it into his pocket.

“And wilt thou give me the same?” Jane asked.

“I will.”

He handed her the knife, and lowered his head so that she could shear a dark curl. She, too, folded it into a handkerchief, and thrust it down the front of her bodice, where it would be safe and next to her heart. He put the knife away and took her hands in his.

“Then there it is. We have exchanged favours, and now we belong to each other.”

“We will be far apart,” Jane said.

“No matter the distance or the time, Jane. You shall always hold your place in my heart.”

M
ICHAELMAS WAS COMING
. S
IR
C
LEMENT
F
ISHER INVITED
J
ANE TO
visit him at Packington Hall, and she knew that he wanted to show her the house and lands that he hoped she would share with him. John accompanied Jane on the trip, and she rode pillion, calling vividly to her mind her travels with Charles. The air was crisp and cool, billowing clouds drifting across the clear blue of the sky.

“Why, it’s the ninth of September!” Jane exclaimed to John. “Ten years to the day that the king came to Bentley and it all began.”

So much had changed in those years, but the fields rolling away on each side of the road, the tawny stubble of the harvest shining gold against the red earth, the birds singing in the trees, the baaing of sheep and the lowing of cattle, the scent of autumn in the air, all that was the same, and what Jane had missed so much when she was abroad.

Clement showed them around his estate, the land stretching away in all directions as far as Jane could see, with deer grazing beneath the sturdy oaks. There was no sound but the gentle murmur of the wind in the leaves, and Jane thought she had never been anywhere that was more beautiful or where she felt more safe. It felt like home.

They stopped at the chapel of St James, the parish church of Great Packington and Clement’s tenants, the ancient headstones in the churchyard stretching back through the centuries. Clement had saved the house for last, but Jane knew she would love it even before they entered. Three storeys of warm red brick with high dormers on the roof, Packington Hall was in ways very much like Bentley Hall. But Athalia was mistress of Bentley, and there Jane would always be the guest of her brother and sister. Packington and all its comfort and beauty could be hers, along with Clement’s love.