Mistress to the Crown (11 page)

‘Princess.’ Hastings clicked his fingers for the diadem. With the smile of a sinful archbishop, he crowned me.

Westminster Palace Hall was in shadow save for the bright ring of candles in the centre where we were to strut. We were herded behind a screen and there we huddled awaiting the return of the royal retinue. I was not the only player who gasped at the massive dimensions of the hall. Huge oaken beams, carved with angels’ heads, thrust out from the walls above our heads and higher still was a great row of embrasured windows, set in jowls of stone, and in each stood a stern, crowned statue.

I knew from Father that a huge stone table ran along the dais. Peering between my companions’ shoulders, I made out the glimmering stretch of white cloth. No one was seated there; the two thrones and benches were empty.

Below the dais at the sides of the hall stood massive cupboards with shelves of glinting platters and flagons. Every other inch of wall was lined with trestle tables propped lengthways. In front of these were the benches and here sat the rest of the court using the trestle supports as backrests.

A trumpet sounded. I heard the assembly rise in a rustle of apparel to make obeisance. Crammed as I was amongst the sweaty bodies jostling for a view, my mouth went dry and my heart panicked, but then the small pipes began and the Greek kings stepped forward leaving me space to breathe. I forced my lungs to calm and crossed myself against evil. Vigilant Talwood patted my arm; I had no choice but to screw up my courage.

Our disport began with poetry but no one in the court was listening. Only when several gentlemen began to call out ribald comments to the players, did the fine lords hush to listen to the jests.

As each Greek king was introduced, I had the chance to distinguish the chief players. The man portraying my husband, King Menelaus of Sparta, was a scrag end of a creature. His brother and blustering overlord, King Agamemnon, looked fit to run a tavern. Achilles had such a magnificent body, all bronzed with metallic paint, that he had me wondering if the King, England’s own ‘Achilles’, had stooped to play a part. No, as the warrior drew back, I heard a shrewish whine: ‘‘Ere, why ‘as ‘ector been given betta armour than me?’

Prince Paris, thank Heaven, was sufficiently manly to be Helen’s lover. He drew great applause as he swaggered forth. Except for a glittering baldric, his chest was bare. I was shocked by his immodest kilt. The leather straps scarcely covered his breech clout.

‘Be ready!’ Talwood whispered as the Greek kings returned behind the screen.

The flute’s voice sounded sensuously.

And now Prince Paris, blessed by moonless sky
,

Like a night thief hides among the shadows

To see this beauteous lady—

‘Now!’ Talwood shoved me forth and there were whoops and cheers as I curtsied
.

Hill, the tabor player, began a sensual beat and the beguiling notes of the small pipes softly slid into the rhythm.

Snared in the circle of light, I lifted my invisible hand mirror at arm’s length and danced with my reflection. Hidden behind my mask, Elizabeth Lambard was unshackled, free to become Helen of Troy, a princess who knew she could make men kill to possess her. As I stilled, sensing Paris’ presence, like a doe hearing her hunter, it was no longer Hastings’ face in my make-believe mirror but a lover I’d always dreamed of.

When the music ended and the applause took over, my practical self dashed out from her temporary prison beneath my heart, trying to seize back control and dampen down her twin’s sinful exuberance. I held her back a few moments longer, acknowledging the huzzahs like I imagined a real princess might with a gracious lowering of the head. Oh, this was heady, wonderful. I should not sleep tonight.

Paris grew impatient. He strode over and embraced me from behind, his prick hard beneath his kilt. Bastard! While the narrator tediously droned out the story for anyone thick as a London piecrust, this cursed Trojan was rubbing his groin against me. Sloppy kisses gushed up my arm from wrist to neck. Worse, he turned me in his embrace and went for my mouth. I resisted; his breath stank of wine but the fellow kept firm hold of my thighs.

‘Don’t overdo the virtue,’ he muttered against my lips. ‘Be craaaazed with love.’ He held me tight against his belly. When he adventured his hand down my throat to my breast, I was doing the stiffening.

‘Lovely,’ he murmured, leering down the gap. ‘Fancy a bit of ravishing afterwards?’

‘Squeeze either an’ you’ll be a coun’er tenor by tonight,’ I hissed back sweetly.

The verses ended. Paris neatly scooped me up with an arm beneath my knees. I pretended to look up at him lovingly. It was a shame he could not have kept my draperies secure. I think the whistles were for a side view of my thigh.

There was no time to chide. While the Greek princes were whining that Helen had been snatched by a Trojan and resolving to go to war to fetch her home, Talwood hauled me through the side door and we raced through passageways until we reached the mock barbican of Troy, where it stood outside the far end of the great hall. An icing of players already clung to its battlements.

Talwood pointed to the ladder. ‘Up! Be quick!’

Before I could get both feet on the plank that served as rampart, the ardent assistants whipped the ladder away. Queen Hecuba’s brawny arm saved me.

‘A squeeze, ain’t it?’ He evidently liked garlic in his stew.

‘God’s Blood,’ I muttered in an alley voice. ‘I feel like one of them jars too broad for a pantry shelf.’

‘An’ I’m a barrel. Move, you lardcakes! ‘Elen should be in the middle.’

The ‘lardcakes’ obeyed. Cassandra, a youth in a long black wig, deftly swung around Hecuba, and we performed an intricate, perilous reversal so that I ended up midway next to Prince Hector’s wife and son.

‘Have to get it right, dearie,’ Hecuba whispered. ‘You bein’ the last to leave.’ He straightened his false bosom and then nudged me: ‘Did Paris feel you up?’

‘Aye, ‘e did.’

The others laughed. ‘Oooh, lucky you.’

‘Tell me,’ I whispered. ‘‘Ow’s the player who was to be ‘elen? Is ‘is ankle mending?’

‘He ain’t done nothing to his ankle, luv. His lordship didn’t want ‘im to do it no more.’

Aha, I was beginning to suspect as much.

‘So wot’s your name, precious?’ asked Hector’s wife, but before I could answer, the edifice shook as the attendants grabbed hold.

‘‘Ere we go, ladies,’ chortled Hecuba, as the doors opened. ‘Wave graciously. We’re royalty, remember.’

The damnable barbican wobbled perilously as it was pushed forwards. Would the timber brackets break, spew us out across the flagstone plain of Troy in a tangle of gauze and wigs? The courtiers were laughing.

‘Oh, I adore playing a queen to a queen,’ Hecuba gushed, waving airily towards the heart of the dais. ‘Ready to blub, Mistress Hector? Got your onion, darlin’?’

With nothing to do save pose like a princess at a tournament, I began to enjoy myself. Although Hector and Achilles’ wooden swords could not strike sparks, there was sufficient force in their combat to have the courtiers cheering. When Hector received the death blow, he pierced the bag hidden beneath his waist, and enacted copious spluttering and staggering as the blood oozed between his fingers.

The onion smell was strong but I wasn’t prepared for the horrific scream right next to me. A shrieking Mistress Hector and son scrambled down to do a ‘woe is me’ over the corpse.

’employed for ‘is screeches,’ Hecuba informed me.

Then came the death of Achilles. He grabbed an arrow to his heel and died with a great deal of twitching. Finally, the Wooden Horse rumbled in. I was disappointed. It was just scaffolding with a painted great horse head sticking out on a pole. Its body was made up of warriors, each holding a curved, dun-coloured shield to resemble a horse’s flanks.

‘Doom, doom!’ Cassandra, who had already climbed down, rushed at the horse waving his arms like a housewife chasing the pigeons from a pea crop. He was carried off in the mêlée as the
Greek soldiers sprang down and some thirty men waged battle.

When the swords and verse came to a standstill, Hecuba descended to wring his huge hands over dead Paris. I tried to look bereft as ‘she’ was led away sobbing. Once all the corpses were dragged into the shadows, the fields of Troy lay deserted and I realised with a jolt that I was the only player left on the battlements

Oh, for more onions. Broken hearted, I held my wrist to my eyes so I could glance back at Talwood. He was firmly signalling me to stay in place.

What in Heaven …? Ah, phew, the narrator stepped back into the candlelight and King Menelaus strode up to the wall of Troy. The cascade of poetry stopped abruptly. Menelaus held out his hand, waiting for me to return with him to Sparta.

Devilment crept into me. Poor Helen. Had Menelaus been a William Shore? I gravely shook my head at his highness of Sparta and flapped my fingers like ass’s ears. The court began to chuckle and then shriek with laughter as the player became really angry.

His overlord, King Agamemnon, joined him. He also held out his hand to me. Still I refused and then suddenly there was a scraping of chair, a movement across the high table, followed by applause. A third king! Tall and magnificent, King Edward halted before the gates of Troy, looked up at me and held out his hand.

By the Saints, I’d never intended this. How I managed that narrow ladder behind the edifice with my heart trying to escape my body, I’ll never know.

England’s king was a huge haze of gold and sable. I inclined my head to him like Princess Helen should, and he graciously led me forward to make a player’s curtsey to the court, then keeping firm hold of my hand, he grinned down at me like a lion viewing dinner.

‘I knew you’d come to me eventually,’ he said.

MISTRESS

I

Paris saved me from answering. Not to be excluded from the tumult of clapping and stamping, he materialised on my left, grabbed my hand with surprising assurance for an artisan, snatched off his wig and bowed. Tethered ash blond hair and smiling teeth gleamed in the candlelight. A young man with dangerous ebullience. He had to be one of the court, I realised, but I was so euphoric it did not matter. I tugged my hand free from his and beckoned the rest of the players out of the darkness. Just because they were not nobles, it did not diminish their right to tributes.

We all made obeisance again and then – thank God – proud hands clasped my shoulders. I knew Hastings was standing behind me.

‘Excellent, Will!’ exclaimed King Edward, but his eyes were on me. ‘Heard you helped out at the final moment, Mistress Shore. Our thanks to you and our compliments on your dancing.’

I could scarce whisper a thank you as I was high on the huzzahs. Sweet Heaven, name a woman who wouldn’t be!

‘I’m Dorset, by the way,’ said Paris in my ear, as if the revelation would ensure I melted. He kissed my hand.

‘Ignore him,’ said King Edward. ‘Paris has been defeated. Let us leave it that way.’

Hastings’ fingers tightened. ‘“Helen” needs to change.’

‘Only her mind,’ murmured the King, ‘or is that now done?’

Too dazed to follow the footwork of this conversation, I did not dare stare above the diamond clasps of his highness’ doublet. ‘Later, then,’ he was saying to somebody.

‘Can we all come?’ quipped Dorset, his lascivious gaze upon my breasts.

And then the atmosphere chilled.

‘Elizabeth,’ purred King Edward.

I thought for a foolish instant that he spoke to me and then
she
appeared from the shadows, a woman in her late thirties, her belly high with child. His queen, Elizabeth Woodville, with emeralds glittering around her throat and golden threads crisscrossing her headdress. Behind the transparent demi-veil, a frown marred her perfect forehead and her full lower lip betrayed her to be somewhat out of temper. I was overwhelmed, not by her ill-humour, but because she was wearing one of Tabby’s girdles over her magnificent brocade gown. I gasped in delight and sank in a deep curtsy, far too euphoric to shiver at the malevolence flowing off her.

‘Ah, the Trojan horse,’ she remarked cryptically, setting her hand upon the King’s proffered wrist. ‘They say, “Beware the Greeks when they bring gifts”.’ Her moon-cool radiance beamed straight across my head at her husband’s friend.

‘Indeed, madame,’ agreed Hastings dryly. ‘Indeed.’

I expected no less than the promise of an escort home as soon as I had cleansed the colours from my face and wriggled back into my own apparel, but when Lord Hastings sent a page requesting me to join him in his chambers, I agreed with delight. Even though the bells of St Martin-le-Grand would soon be sounding
curfew in the city, I cheerfully followed Talwood through the coney warren of servants’ passageways.

Hastings was sprawled with his feet upon a footstool and a fine glass goblet in his hand. His doublet and stomacher were gone, the collar of office dangled from the back of his chair, and only a gemmed cross glittered among the loosened laces of his shirt. He bestirred himself in welcome and kissed my cheek.

‘Here is the necklace back, my lord,’ I said, laying the golden leaves upon a little painted table.

‘No, keep it as your player’s fee, my dear Elizabeth. You exceeded all my expectations. Here, let me!’ He fastened it back about my throat, before he poured me wine. Feeling the necklace against my skin and the costly goblet between my fingers, my senses thrilled. Elizabeth Lambard was in Westminster Palace drinking with the King’s close friend. Except he looked haggard in the candlelight – utterly forgivable –
The Siege of Troy
would have leeched anyone’s vitality.

We touched rims. ‘You did well,’ he said, raising his glass to me.

I shook my head with genuine modesty. ‘By the skin of my teeth. The other players were very kind and Master Talwood made a wondrous guardian angel. No, it is certainly you who deserve all the praise, my lord.’ I drank to him.

There was no return sparkle in his eyes. No hint that he desired to make love tonight. Sometimes I forgot he was so much older. Around us, the silence seemed suddenly precipitous and my delight began to ebb. I took another sip of wine.