Lady Gallant (10 page)

One of the Queen's friends shooed the ladies out of the chamber, and Nora tried not to run from the room. In the last few days the Queen had refused to leave the palace, and that had sparked more rumors. Some said Princess Elizabeth had been taken to the Tower; she had been murdered by order of the Queen. Once it was bruited that the Queen had been murdered. Next people were sure that the Queen had called for troops from her Spanish husband in order to arrest and try scores of heretics. The next day everyone said the Queen had sent the crown of England to Mary, Queen of Scots and her French husband.

The last out of the privy chamber, Nora scurried along behind the other ladies-in-waiting and darted glances around the palace chambers. Lord Montfort wasn't about, and she relaxed. Perhaps he was busy with arrangements for that night's feast. The Queen insisted that the event take place in spite of her illness, and she was sending her ladies in her place.

Nora's heels tapped on the palace floor as she followed a fat countess. Tonight's banquet didn't signify. She'd been successful—for the most part—in avoiding Lord Montfort since the quarrel over those kittens; she could survive a feast at his house among a hundred guests.

Gaining her own chamber, she went to the window seat and took up her embroidery. Arthur joined her with his new lute, and she listened to him practice chords. Yes, she had outwitted Christian de Rivers, who seemed determined to pounce on her anywhere, from the presence chamber to the yew maze in the royal garden.

"I think Lord Montfort has given up," she said to Arthur.

"Good, my lady." Arthur didn't approve of Lord Montfort, in spite of the lord's attempts to bribe him with comfits and a new bow.

"It's not that I'm not grateful to him for saving my life," she added.

"Yes, my lady."

Nora smiled. She and Arthur often sat like this, with her talking more to herself than to him, and the page making polite noises of interest. Regardless of his youth, she trusted him where she did not trust the girls at court her own age.

"It's just that," she went on, "no matter his blandishments and attentions, I'm sure he hasn't changed his opinion of me. He thinks I'm a—a mouse."

"The snark." Arthur plucked a minor chord and sniffed.

Nora blinked at her page's choice of words. "And anyway, he's not comfortable."

"My lady?"

"When he looks at me, I feel, well, uncomfortable. I don't know." She studied the French knot she was making with gold thread. "You've seen duels, Arthur. You know that look that comes upon a fencer just before the duel begins, when he knows he must concentrate on his opponent and nothing else or die. That's the way Lord Montfort looks at me. It isn't comfortable."

Arthur put his lute aside and looked around as if in search of eavesdroppers. Seeing that they were alone, he whispered, "Mayhap he's a cunning man, a sorcerer, my lady. The other pages say he consorts with roughs and knaves, that he's never given up the evil he was raised to."

Frowning, Nora considered the possibility that Christian de Rivers was a sorcerer. The Queen's priests said that the Devil sent his servants among the unsuspecting in many disguisings. If the Evil One had sent Lord Montfort, the disguise was most pleasing—and therefore most dangerous. Nora congratulated herself for having escaped him. Indeed, he was not a comfortable or virtuous man.

There was a knock at her chamber door. Arthur answered it and returned bearing a letter. Nora almost snatched it from his hand, for she recognized her father's handwriting. Breaking the seal, she read the note quickly, only to let the paper fall to her lap. She stared unseeing at her embroidery hoop.

He was coming. He was coming to London, and would see her. He was coming, and he was angry. It was her fault, for she'd failed to catch the notice of a family with a rich heir. She should have been married years ago, but how could she have married then, when she'd spent most of her time in the country? Her companions had been her nurse, her tutors, and now Arthur.

She had tried to make herself worthy. From the fading memories of her mother before she died of the sweat, Nora recalled a quiet voice praising her for her clever wits. Hearing of the great scholarship, brilliance, and daring of Princess Elizabeth, she had set the royal lady up as Nora's standard. Elizabeth could speak French, Latin, Greek, and Italian. Elizabeth stood up to privy councillors and flayed them with her tongue. She had survived plots to have her beheaded and emerged from the Tower to the cheers of the people when Queen Mary let her go for lack of proof of treason.

Elizabeth was brave and beautiful, sophisticated and daring. Nora was none of those things. Her father said so, often, and now he was coming to court. He would arrive that night.

As she did when her father paid one of his rare visits to her country home, Nora spent the next few hours alternately fussing over her appearance and trying to think of excuses for the faults he was sure to point out. Since the list of her faults was endless, the hour of her father's arrival came quickly. Still feeling unprepared to face him, Nora hid behind an ornamental screen in a gallery through which her father would pass on his way to the closet where they would meet.

She had paid the sergeant at arms to come this way so that she could observe her father unseen. It was an old habit, this spying. It arose from the time when her father had first conceived of the idea that she was a bastard.

She could remember the day clearly, for he had come to her while she was at her spelling lesson, dismissed her governess, and told her of his suspicion. From that day on, though he kept his suspicion a secret from all but her and her mother, Nora never saw the blessing of his smile. Her mother spent much of her time pleading with him and crying, but always when she thought Nora couldn't hear her. A few months later, Mother fell ill of the sweat. Exhausted by her grief, she had little strength to fight for life, and soon left off trying.

To be ten years old and cast out of a father's heart and then lose one's mother was to be lost and bewildered, a battered and storm-tossed little dingy on an ocean of hostility. Soon Nora began to suspect that she was to blame for the unhappiness of her parents. It seemed only logical that if Mother hadn't been unhappy because of her, she wouldn't have died.

Afraid and burdened with guilt, Nora shrank in upon herself. Inside, she curled up as a fox curls up against the chill of a winter's night. She was alone.

As the months passed, she grew used to missing her mother, but not her father. Mother was gone, but Father was not. She saw him every day, and yet he eschewed her company. To recapture a small amount of sunshine in her life, she decided to spy on her father. She would creep into corners and behind tapestries so that she could see the smile he never gave her, hear the laughter reserved for his friends and his mistresses. When he finally sent her away, it was a blessing. In the old country estate of her mother's mother, she learned to put grief behind her and fill her life with sunshine of her own.

Now she waited again for the swift thud of boots as she had when she was little. Her father's tread was distinctive. Always quick and always loud with the bulk of his thick frame, it reminded her of the tread of an enthusiastic bull who had spotted an intruder in his pasture and was happily running him down. Nora giggled at the image of her father galloping across a pasture, then clamped a hand over her mouth. The rapid tap of leather on polished wood signaled Father's arrival.

In a sweep of brown velvet and gold chains, William Becket charged into view. Gold of hair and massive of frame, he neither glanced about the court nor took notice of the curious stares that always greeted the arrival of a newcomer. He preserved about his person the reserve and isolation of an abbot. This reserve dropped away when he was at leisure, or when he was angry. The tepid waters of his temper could boil in the flicker of a candle flame, as they had when William decided that a black-haired mite such as Nora couldn't have been sired by a golden giant like himself.

William was past her in moments, and Nora raced to gain the closet before he arrived. She burst through the door, trotted to a side table decked with food and wine, and passed a shaking hand over the silver flagon and goblets that waited there. The door opened and closed before she could catch her breath. She licked her lips briefly, lifted her eyes, then lowered her gaze to the floor as she curtsied.

A grunt served as her acknowledgment. Nora murmured her own greeting, but William brushed past her to grab the wine flagon. He filled a goblet and drank it down before addressing her.

"Get up from that ridiculous half curtsy," he said. "I'm tired and I want to go to bed. A fine thing it is to be full of joy and good tidings and yet find a goose-witted fool one's only audience."

He slammed the goblet onto the side table and crashed down into the only chair in the room. Nora opened her mouth to apologize—she wasn't sure why—but William ignored her.

"God has answered my prayers," he said. "My wife is pregnant, and I've come to town to purchase gifts for her. I'm going to have a child of my own. You know what this means?"

Nora gaped at her father. She'd known his reason for marrying again had been to get an heir he didn't suspect of being another man's child. What could she say?

"It means my honor is restored," he said when she remained silent.

Wrinkling her brow, Nora shifted her weight from one foot to the other and tried to follow this line of reasoning.

"And I want you disposed of before my son or daughter arrives. I should have known better than to send you to court. I thought you might grow pretty under the tutelage of the finest noblewomen in the kingdom, but I was foolish to expect it of you."

Heat spread up her neck and face, and she ducked her head. "I tried, but the clothes…" Her voice faded as her courage withered under William's regard.

"I should have known no one would want you. You're plain and stupid, and no man wants a plain and stupid wife. So I've taken care of the matter myself. You're going to marry Percivale Flegge, son of Sir Badulf. And you're going to do it in three months' time, before my heir is born."

"Percivale Flegge," Nora whispered. She wet her lips and forced herself to speak up. "But Percivale Flegge… everyone knows he's got the—the pox. That's why he can't get a wife. The pox is eating his face and his wits as well."

"That's all gossip." William rose from his chair with the air of a man who had accomplished an unpleasant task. "Forsooth, I'm weary. It's off to the town house for me. A good joint of meat and cool beer is what I need."

He eyed the used goblet on the sideboard. While Nora stood in a daze, he whisked it away, hiding it under the chair behind one of the legs. Irrelevant thoughts swarmed in Nora's head. Her father never could stand the sight of soiled plate or clothing, or a dirty floor. At mealtimes he insisted that each dish be taken out of his sight as it was used and replaced with a clean one. He had to keep three extra sculleries for the purpose.

She woke from her standing dream when her father headed for the door. "Not Percivale Flegge," she said.

William's head whipped around, and she jumped at the sudden boom of his voice. "Not Percivale Flegge? By God's wounds! A woman needs but three virtues, chastity, silence, and obedience. They are all your sex is capable of, and I expect them from you, mistress. God strike me if I haven't behaved toward you with Christian charity." He strode up to her and bent over her, thrusting his face in front of hers. "When I knew you were not my spawn, I didn't cast you out. I've fed you and clothed you for years for the love I bore your mother, but I'll be damned if I'll do it any longer. You're an old maid, and it's time you married. I'll not have my new seed despoiled by contact with the Devil's offspring."

Nora shrank back from the rage that hit her like the heat from a kiln. "But, Father—"

"Silence! I'm signing the betrothal contract next month. Willing or no, you're going to marry, and I don't care how or to whom. If I have to truss you up like a stoat being taken to market, you're going to marry."

He grasped her shoulder and shoved her away. Without looking at her again, he stalked from the room.

Massaging her bruised shoulder, Nora stood gaping at the door. Percivale Flegge. Everyone said Percivale Flegge had festered lips and suffered from fits of violence, all from diseases arising from his debauchery. They said he'd been away from court because his family was trying to hide him. They needed an heir from Percivale desperately, but the young man's plight was too well known among the nobility.

Nora crossed herself and sank to her knees. Words of supplication tumbled from her lips. Surely God would help her. Even she, plain and stupid as she was, didn't deserve Percivale Flegge. Did she? The words of her prayer faltered as she wavered. Was this God's punishment? Was she all the things that her father accused her of being? Nora squeezed her eyes shut and resumed her prayers. God protected even the worst sinners. If she prayed hard enough, he might protect her.