The King’s Sister (12 page)

‘I fear you are right, Sir John. But perhaps he is ready at last …’

Sir John laughed softly. ‘Where has my sprightly Lady of the Lists vanished to?’

Now I had to look at him. ‘I don’t understand, Sir John.’

‘No? Why can you not look at me?’

‘I am looking at you.’ But I looked away.

‘You are very stern. I read unhappiness in your face. I see you have been warned off by a more powerful voice than
that of my mother. I wonder what the Duke has said to you.’

How clever he was at reading court wiles and stratagems. I did not pretend to misunderstand. I had too much pride for that, and gathered it tight about me. Under such provocation my eyes flew to his, and stayed there.

‘Yes. I have been warned.’

‘Did my past dalliance with the lovely Isabella matter so much to you?’

‘It was not your past mistress, sir. It was your present politics.’

‘Ah! But I don’t seek a political alliance with you, Elizabeth.’

His implied meaning shivered over me, but I would not be won round. ‘No, but you do seek one with my father.’

‘How should that be? I am in no need of Lancaster. I am the King’s brother.’

He was almost persuasive, but I knew what I had seen. ‘The court is splitting into factions. I have seen it. I know where your interests lie. I know that Richard intends to send you to Ireland, and you would rather not go.’

He allowed his hand to drop from my bridle, his voice suddenly severe and cold, yet no colder than his eyes.

‘I did not dance with you for politics.’

‘But you did to win Lancaster support, perhaps.’

A flash of anger was there, swift as a dragonfly. And then it was gone. ‘It was not to encourage you to speak favourably of me that I fought for you and carried your guerdon.’

‘But it would undoubtedly have been in your interests to do so, if you impressed the Duke.’

‘I impressed him well enough at St Malo without your help. My skill with sword and lance would stand me in better stead than my ability to charm a woman.’ I could see the sharp displeasure as he took a step back, away from me. ‘I see that severe damage has been done and your mind twisted against me. By the Duke? Of course. I misjudged you, Elizabeth. I thought you had a mind to make your own decisions.’

‘I do.’ I leaned forward, keeping my voice low. This was not a conversation to make available to eavesdroppers. ‘I see Richard with Robert de Vere. I see you clasping hands with my father and brother. I too am of use, as a pawn in your own particular game. Farewell, Sir John. It was a most enjoyable experience. You have extended my education in the value of a woman of my bloodline. And the heady delights of flirtation, of course, which I expect to find efficacious in the future. But not with you, Sir John.’

I gripped my reins, to urge my mare forward, dropping one of my gloves as she tossed her head, instantly furious with my clumsiness in doing so. Sir John retrieved it, brushing the dust from the embroidered gauntlet while I held out my hand imperiously, for fear he thought I had done it with purpose. Which I had not, although once it might have crossed my mind.

‘I was maladroit.’

‘I think I will keep it.’ He did not seem to have much pleasure in the thought.

‘What is the use of a single glove?’

‘None at all. Give me the other.’ He held out his hand.

‘Not I!’

And then the smile had returned, that disarming gleam that swept away all his anger at the same time as it threatened to undermine my irritation with him.

‘Perhaps one day you will. Or I will return this to you. For now I will keep it, in memory of a pleasant interlude. Brief but unforgettable.’

He tucked it into his belt.

‘What is the point of that?’

‘I don’t know yet. But one day I will.’

‘You will forget me as soon as I am out of sight, Sir John.’

‘I will not forget you. Nor will you forget me.’

‘I will try very hard.’

‘I’ll not allow it.’ The gleam had vanished, the temper returned twofold. It was like conversing with the Roman two-faced Janus, lurching from one emotion to another.

‘And how can you prevent it?’

‘Elizabeth, you know as well as I that our thoughts are destined to run in tandem.’

‘No, they are not!’

Hopelessly I kicked my mare to walk towards where Constanza was seated in her litter, yet could not resist looking back, and asking; ‘Was I only a pleasant interlude?’

A show of puerile weakness I instantly regretted. Sir John applauded. I scowled.

‘What is that?’ I demanded, as cross as he, as the slap of palm against palm echoed off the walls.

‘My congratulations. How well schooled you have been by the Duke to see only ill in me.’

‘You misjudge me.’

‘
You
misjudge
me,
madam. If you think that I courted you
simply to pass the long hours at court, you might as well leave.’

‘How would I know?’

‘How would you not, if your emotions were truly engaged? You were the least compliant woman of my extensive acquaintance. It took me much time and effort to win your regard, and I thought it well spent. I see I wasted my time. Go then!’ He bowed with exaggerated depth, the jaunty feather in his cap sweeping the dust in saturnine mockery. ‘Good day to you, Countess. I wish you well in your chosen life.’

Which made me lift my head in hurt pride, presenting my back to him, furious with his rejection and with my weakness in stepping into the trap. And then behind me I could hear Jonty’s voice raised in some exchange, followed by Sir John’s replying to him, a reply that made Jonty guffaw with laughter. That was my future. Jonty. Not John Holland.

My heart sank along with my spirits.

I would see him again. Of course I would. Of necessity our paths would cross, but I would greet him as an acquaintance. The magic was gone. He would make his way in the world, one way or another, and I would have no part in it other than as a mildly interested member of the court. I had lost him. My floundering heart was sore indeed.

I looked around me at the Westminster scene I was leaving. What was there for me now? My father’s words of disapproval, his sharp lesson in court politics, hammered into me and I knew I must concur. I would do what Philippa would do in my shoes. I would be what she would be. I would go with Constanza and Jonty and transform myself
into an exemplary daughter, wife, sister. Until the day when I would fulfil my role and become an exemplary mother to the Pembroke heir.

Meanwhile I would rage against the unfairness of life, that the man who stirred my senses like the ingredients of a stock pot, had his eye set on some far distant goal that did not encompass me. And had reprimanded me for my lack of compliance.

Well, I would not comply.

And then Jonty was there, grinning, at my side.

‘Are we ready?’ he asked, manner disgustingly bright.

‘For the past half hour.’

We rode out together.

‘I like John Holland,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

‘Once I did.’

‘Oh. Have you quarrelled?’

‘No. I don’t quarrel.’ I caught his stare. ‘Well, sometimes.’

‘You’ve lost a glove.’

‘So I have.’

‘I’ll buy you another. It’s the sort of thing a lord gives to his lady.’

‘So it is.’

In the end, against my intentions, I looked back.

He was not there. Of course he was not. He would be gone to plot some other means to place himself at the centre of power. The quick blaze of his anger had surprised me, but did I not have more right to anger than he?

W
as there ever a man who kept his word? I did not think so.

I was settled at Hertford in stifling luxury, far from the glamour of Westminster and the questionable allure of John Holland’s personality, and decidedly unhappy. Men, I decided, were the source of much heartache for women.

At court, John Holland had become a necessity for my happiness. Now that I had rejected him and his campaign for self-aggrandisement, there was no place for him in my existence. This was my life, Countess of Pembroke, waiting for her lord to reach maturity, while Jonty, running wild with the other lads of our household whenever the Master of Arms took his eye off him, showed little sign of arriving there.

I hoped the Duke was satisfied with the sacrifice I had made in the name of family alliances, for I was buried in impossible boredom and exasperation. Moreover I felt that
I had been dispatched here in disgrace, although my father had been more circumspect in his wording. Still it rankled.

John Holland had promised that he would never allow me to forget him. The silence from that quarter was shrieking in my head.

The Duke, as a placatory gesture, had offered to take me with him to Calais. I was not invited.

Jonty had promised me a pair of new gloves. I was still waiting, and would wait for ever. When he went north to Kenilworth, my husband sent a scribbled apology for his omission and information that he had a new hound. Not that I lacked such items or the wherewithal to purchase a pair with the finest leatherwork around the gauntlet, exactly like the one in John Holland’s possession.

Why would he not return it?

How repetitious my life became in those months after my return. Early rising for Mass. Some reading, stitching, conversation with Constanza. Perhaps a little hunting or hawking, or walking in the gardens as the weather grew milder. The day-to-day affairs of Hertford ran as smooth as the length of silk of the altar cloth I was stitching. Our steward would have politely deflected any interest I might show. And rightly. I would have been dabbling for dabbling’s sake. I had no interest in domestic affairs.

‘Are you quite well?’ Constanza asked, when I must have sighed inordinately over the gold thread that tangled itself into knots in my careless fingers. I cared not whether the panel was ever complete.

‘I am in perfect health.’

I resisted casting it onto the floor. I must not sigh or draw attention to my restlessness.

‘You are very self-absorbed. Which is unlike you.’

‘I find the days heavy,’ I said, as much as I was prepared to admit. ‘The time hangs as if it were still.’

‘Prayer would help.’

Prayer would
not
help. ‘The fine weather will improve my mood.’

‘Perhaps you feel for your brother’s grief,’ Constanza suggested, her own eyes moist.

‘Yes.’ And I bowed my head so that she could not see how deeply I grieved for him. And for Mary. The much desired child, a son, born at Rochford Hall, had lived no longer than four days. I had not seen Henry, and could only imagine his distress, but I mourned for him, recalling our quarrel at Westminster, which might be healed but still hovered over me. The sad loss and Mary’s devastation, even though I had no experience of such grief, merely added to the weight of those days.

‘I would still recommend prayer. We will pray together after supper.’

I sighed.

How lacking in excitement, in flavour, my life had become, like a winter repast, stripped of spice and herbs. Like a constant diet of salt fish and pottage. Even our visitors were dull, with nothing to say for themselves.

And still John Holland haunted me.

And what was he doing? John Holland was far too busy to have any thought of me, honing his diplomatic skills in embassies with the Duke in Calais. He was in good favour
with my father. Obviously my support for his cause was an irrelevance.

As his presence was to me.

I set another row of stitches with consummate concentration before abandoning it, informing Constanza that she would find me in my own chamber. I did not know what to do with my thoughts or my restless feet and fingers, but at least I could pace there without drawing attention.

‘Don’t forget to meet for prayers, Elizabeth.’

‘Nothing would please me more, madam.’

And then it began, with a Lancaster courier bringing letters and news to Constanza, as they frequently did, passing over a little package with what could only be described as a sly grimace and well-practised guile, as if he often delivered packages which should not be delivered. I received it with equal sleight of hand, hiding it in my oversleeve. And when I unwrapped it, it was to find a silver pin in the shape of a heart, quite plain without gems, but snapped in two. Wrapped around the damaged silver was a twist of parchment and a note in a hand I did not know.

A trifle, broken asunder, as my heart is damaged.

It gave me much food for thought, wagering an emerald pin on the author of that sentiment. It was not Jonty, for whom poetic chivalry was still buried deep beneath the urgent training of hawks and hounds.

Who would single me out for a gift worthy of a chivalric troubadour?

Ha!

And with the passage of days and weeks the gifts continued, all under cover, all small enough to be hidden away from prying eyes in my elm coffer. In some weeks not one courier set foot in Hertford without some item accompanying him, cleverly wrapped in leather or a screw of paper, and the note that accompanied each was brief, enigmatic and unsigned. There was no clue here to the author of the gifts. But for me, there was no riddle to solve.

A pilgrim’s token from the shrine at Walsingham, the cheap pewter dull with the damp of travel.

May the face of the Blessed Virgin smile on you, when you do not allow me the privilege.

A mirror case carved in ivory showing a lady crowning her chosen knight with a garland.

I cannot see my true love, but you can see the face that stops my heart.

A pair of candle trimmers. Very practical!

As you douse your candle, imagine my arms enfolding you in the dark of your bed.

A feathered mask, its edges frayed with age, reminiscent of some past Twelfth Night masque.

Would you hide your true emotions from me?

A ribboned lover’s knot, nothing more than a fairing.

What value my love for you, Lady of Lancaster?

A pair of finches in a wicker cage, which arrived in the full light of day, singing cheerfully.

They will sing my petition for your true regard, whereas I cannot sing at all.

Which was true enough. John Holland might have no voice but he was not without low cunning. Had he also lost
his wits to send me so winsome an offering, but something so obvious and impossible to accept discreetly?

‘Who are the birds from?’ Philippa asked when I had hung them in my chamber and they began to trill in the sunshine. Philippa had returned to Hertford for which I was inexpressibly grateful.

‘Jonty,’ I replied. ‘In recompense for forgetting the gloves.’

Whether my sister believed me or not I had no idea, but I found myself waiting, day after day, for the next offering, disappointed when none materialised, setting up a dialogue that part infuriated me, part intrigued.

He will grow tired of it.

He will not. He is trying to wear down my resistance to him.

He will grow weary if you do not reply.

But I will not reply. To reply will put me in his power. To show any interest whatsoever will tell him that he is in my thoughts.

Some of them are charmingly subtle.

And some are particularly crude!

Some are romantic.

Wait until he sends me a dose of agrimony to move the bowels …

What does he intend, with a wooing of such charming foolishnesses?

I knew exactly what he intended. He had great practice in seduction. Did Isabella not have a coffer full of such offerings?

Do you care what Isabella has?

No. And I wish he would stop!

But he did not, and the gifts, trivial as they were, warmed my heart’s blood. But I was not seduced. I would not be. My feet could never walk in unison with those of John Holland.

And then. A single glove, which I recognised full well. My own. Was he returning it to signal he no longer had a care to keep it? Perhaps he would at last allow me to forget him, for my mind and my senses to live at ease.

My heart leapt, dismay a chill coating in my belly. I did not want that. I tore at the wrapping, dropping it to the floor. ‘It’s just the glove I lost.’ Philippa was keeping a closer eye on my gifts. I busied myself discovering its mate in my coffer to hide any heat in my cheeks

‘No need for Jonty to buy you new ones then!’ she remarked dryly. ‘You seem to be in receipt of many packages.’

I crunched the message in the palm of my hand, smoothing it out as soon as I could, and exhaled with relief.

To restore the lost glove to its partner. They were not made to exist apart. As you were not made to live apart from me …

Slowly I pulled on the reunited pair, smoothing the soft leather over my fingers. No, they were not made to exist apart. This was right that they should be together. But was I prepared to acknowledge my own need? He was not allowing me to forget him. It exercised all my will to struggle to banish him from my memory. I was burning with loss and longing. And would have continued to do so until another torn piece of parchment, finely folded, made its way to me. As I opened it, suitably intrigued at the blank sheet with no message, a smattering of coarse dust fell to the floor. I knelt. Not dust but tiny pieces of dried leaves. Rescuing some of
them, I placed them in my palm and sniffed. The aroma was very faint.

‘What’s this?’ I asked Philippa, holding out my hand.

She too sniffed. ‘An herb. Is it rue?’

It could be. So what was this? A pinch of rue and no words of love or seduction. I knew its uses, but not its meaning. As it crossed my mind to wonder which of his female acquaintances had supplied him with this, I headed to the kitchens for a discussion with Constanza’s cook, to ask the question: ‘If a woman receives a gift of rue, what should she understand by it?’

John Holland intrigued me, fascinated me, repelled me. I despised the artifice he employed to woo my senses, for rue implied regret. It implied grief and farewell.

He had given up on me at last.

Or had he? Was this merely another ploy to whet my appetite, enticing me with sentimental humours, only to cast me adrift with a clever pinch of crushed leaves that I had dusted from my hands to the floor?

I cared not.

Oh, but I wished … But then, I did not know what it was that I truly wished for. All I heard was the echo of John’s voice in my mind, in my ear, whispering inducements with all the subtlety of the snake in the Garden of Eden. It was dangerous, but I enjoyed the danger. What woman would not?

One of Philippa’s women fetched me, with a warning that set my heart racing. My sister was unwell. When I came into her bedchamber, it was to find her weeping without restraint, her ladies fluttering round her.

‘Philippa!’

I was across the space from door to bed in an instant, taking her in my arms.

‘Don’t mind me.’ Her reply was muffled against my shoulder. ‘It’s nothing.’

My sister did not weep for nothing. My sister rarely wept. I cast about in my mind for a reason that would reduce her to such misery.

‘Is it Henry?’

‘No.’

‘Mary, then …’ Had she not recovered from the tragic birth of their little son?

‘No. They’re happy enough. They’ve agreed to wait before Mary invites him to her bed again.’

And Philippa wept even harder.

‘Tell me.’ Waving her women away, I shook her gently. ‘I’ll hang the finches in your room if you don’t.’ Their shrill singing wearied after a while.

‘What will become of me?’

‘I can’t imagine. Are we talking about the next hour or the next three years?’

She did not smile, but at least she told me.

‘I am twenty-two years old. Where is the marriage plan for me? What if there never is?’

‘But there will be.’

‘Don’t tell me there is a foreign prince just waiting for
me to land in his lap. Sometimes I have a terrible conviction that I will end my days in a convent.’

I smoothed her hair, wiped her cheeks. Philippa was softer than I, gentler, far kinder. What a waste it would be if she did not have her own family to love and cherish.

‘It will happen. You know that the Duke will …’

‘I have no one—and you are so ungrateful,’ she interrupted on a wail of misery. ‘You have a husband. You have a man who flirts with you disgracefully. And you don’t want either of them …’ She covered her mouth with her hands looking at me in utter dismay, eyes blind with tears. ‘I never meant to say that.’

I grew still under the bitter lash. Was it not true? I was wrapped about in my own desires, with no thought for Philippa’s lack. How hard she must find it, with both Henry and I wed, and there was nothing I could say to remedy her grief. Except that I could be more understanding, less heedless of everything that did not touch my own life. I promised myself that I would try. But for now …