Mistress to the Crown (31 page)

‘I thought you would be keeping vigil at Ned’s bier tonight?’ I prompted gently, rising to my feet.

Anguished blue eyes stared up at me. ‘All night, too? I can’t, Elizabeth. I’ll not get through my duties tomorrow unless I get a few hours respite. My head feels like it’s been scoured out. Anyway, I’m not needed. Stanley’s in charge until daylight. I beg you let me stay just a few hours. I tried to snatch a few winks at the palace but every instant some jack comes knocking: “What about the mourning liveries, my lord?”, “What about this?”, “What about that?” Ask the damned queen!’

He was so wretched. How could I refuse? I shared the valerian with him, built up the fire and fetched down bed linen to make the daybed comfortable. I bade Isabel neither to clear
away the platters nor disturb him in any way and then I went to bed.

The night was cold. I kept thinking of Ned’s body lying in the chapel and his soldiers keeping watch at each corner, their heads bowed, their fists upon their down-turned swords. So much I thought upon the past, the happy times, and I wept, my fist in my mouth, for a king taken too soon, too soon.

And then I heard the sound of a man sobbing. The parlour was below my bedchamber and I defy anyone to say they could cover their ears to another’s misery. Compassion, an unfulfilled motherly response, call it what you will, compelled me to pull on my wrap and go downstairs.

Gently I lifted the latch. The dying fire showed me the white of his sleeve, the glint of silver hair as he lay face down between the cushions, his body shuddering.

‘My lord,’ I whispered, kneeling to lightly touch his shoulder. ‘Is there aught I may bring you? More valerian?’

He shook his head, gulping too much to find a voice. Oh, he needed so desperately to sleep and Sleep, elusive creature that she is, was being cruelly fickle.

I drew the blankets up and tucked them about him. I would have left him but he caught my arm. ‘S-Stay a little.’

‘Only if you promise to go to sleep now,’ I whispered. I stroked his back like I might sooth a child frightened by evil dreams. In a soft, languorous voice I began to tell a story and slowly, slowly, the judder of his shoulders gave way to a peaceful rise and fall. Weariness had at last closed the shutters of his mind but I was left remembering the other unfinished tale told to a dying king and I could not hold back my grief. I tried not to make a sound but Hastings stirred.

‘My poor Elizabeth!’ His fingertips traced my tears and then he clasped my hand. ‘God’s mercy, woman, you’re frozen.’ He lifted
the blanket, gathered me up against him and I wept, grateful for care. I became drowsy, reluctant to seek out my cold bed. The wool hose he wore was warm against the back of my knees and his breathing had become soft and regular. There was no sin, no desire. He snuggled against me like he would his wife so I did not leave but fell into a deep, warm slumber.

Later, it was a different matter. His right hand began to stroke across my belly. Drowsy, I thought it was Ned who lay beside me and then I remembered. God pardon my sin, but Hastings’ hand awoke my body’s desire. It was half a year since I had shared the royal bed and in the last seven years I had been faithful. No man but Ned had lain with me.

Truly, there was no disrespect to Ned’s spirit intended. In our desperate, rapid lovemaking, there was healing for us both. Afterwards, I returned to my bedchamber guilty but consoled. I did not regret what happened but it would not occur again.

I dressed before daylight and went down to wake Hastings because he would need to steal back to the palace lest the scandal harm us both. Since my servants were still abed in the attic, I played my lord’s attendant, carried up an ewer of hot water and offered to barber him.

Clean-shaven and smelling of Castilian soap, Hastings almost looked his old self. Sleep, and perhaps our coupling, had relit the lantern of his soul, for there was a vigour in his step.

‘You should be canonised, Elizabeth dear,’ he whispered, grabbing up his cloak from the settle. ‘Hapless petitioners and sad chamberlains.’ However, during the lathering, he had apparently acquired a conscience, for he added, ‘I ask your pardon for what happened between us.’ His blue eyes beseeched me for absolution.

‘Call it mutual consolation.’ In wifely fashion, I tidied his cloak across his breast making sure his collar of office was concealed. ‘Now take care no one recognises you.’

He stilled my hands. ‘Do you want me to send for your brother and assure him that—’

‘I’m not a cut loaf?’ I sighed. ‘Ha! Whitewashing my brothers’ opinions of me will take until Doomsday not to mention all the mops and pails in England.’ I would not admit how much the disgust in Will’s face had scalded me.

‘But if I had not come here. What about your servants? Can they be trusted?’

‘Enough, Lord Chamberlain! Go and arrange a coronation!’ I chided amicably, passing him his hat and gloves.

He tucked them beneath his arm and kissed my cheek. ‘Thank you for your charity.’ But still he lingered, drawing on his gloves, his lips tightening as though he had some unpleasant confidence. ‘Listen, I wish with all my heart you could come with us when we take Ned’s body to Windsor, Elizabeth, but it’s not … You understand?’

‘I understand.’ I expected no concessions. It still hurt to be the friend who would not be there. ‘When is it to be? You haven’t told me.’ I suppose neither of us wanted to think about the finality.

‘I cry you pardon. Ten days, I believe.’ He put his fingers to the bridge of his nose, needing to calculate. ‘Yes, just short of St George’s Day.’ It was hard for him to go on but he managed. ‘A … week in St Stephen’s, across to the Abbey and then from Charing to Syon, thence to Eton and finally, St Geor—’ He swallowed, trying to regain his voice. ‘I-I have to break my wand of office and throw it in his grave.’

‘O Sweet Christ!’ I remembered the three of us standing in the chancel and how I had hated the talk of monuments. ‘Well, do not run yourself ragged,’ I whispered, and shook him in wifely fashion. ‘A pity Gloucester cannot be shouldering some of this.’

‘He’ll come south as soon as he can.’ He kissed me on the cheek before he pulled his hood up over his hat to hide his face. ‘I’ll be
like a horse on a treadmill until the funeral’s over, Elizabeth, but if you need my help before I leave, send your man across. After all, I promised Ned I’d care for you.’

Care is an ambiguous word and the slight flare in his gaze as he said it mightily perturbed me. Would this ‘good lordship’ come with obligations? Had he and Ned privily arranged my future like some chattel to be handed down?

Item i: I bequeath to my beloved friend my second best bed and also one mistress with hangings attached
.

But maybe I was wrong.

‘Thank you, my lord.’ I curtsied, grateful to hide my face. ‘Pray you, wait an instant.’ I hastened up to my bedchamber and from my coffer I took out the white rose from Ned that I had pressed so long ago. For a moment, I hesitated, longing to keep it as a remembrance, yet how else to show the world that a king’s mistress had a wand of office too. The right to grieve, the choice to love, even if I was a woman. ‘Please, will you cast this in Ned’s grave for me?’

And I laid the flower across his outstretched palm.

Call it common sense; by the time I had breakfasted, I’d reached the decision to be quit of Westminster. I went outside, found myself a splash of sunlight and sat down with my writing board. My reasoning went like this:

i.   I may be a whore but not by nature despite what my brothers think
.

ii.   I should not have behaved like an alley cat even with grief as my excuse
.

iii.   I shall not let the Queen or Gloucester rearrange my life
.

iv.   I shall move out of here before one of them uses a broom on me
.

v.   If H starts thinking like a reckless dotard and wants to bed me, the scandal can be used against him by his enemies
.

vi.   I am not going to let that happen. (I underlined ‘not’ thrice)

vii.   I am free to make my own decisions
.

viii.   I have resources and do not need a man to protect me
.

ix.   I cannot be sure of that unless I try to stand on my own feet
.

x.   God willing!

So there it was, I was going to remove temptation from the palace doorstep and hasten to my house in Aldersgate.

And speaking of doorsteps: by ten o’clock, mine was a-buzz with blowflies – victuallers, who had smelled my demise, and wanted their bills paid lest I disappear into a purgatory reserved for royal mistresses. One had the gall to say I might pay by spreading my legs. Lubbe was hot to let the fellow’s teeth become acquainted with his spine, but I wanted no bloody fracas. I was about to summon help from the palace guardroom when a larger pest dispersed them.

Dorset. No shutting the door in his face so Isabel showed him in. He sprawled, all sable and gilt, on the settle where Hastings had sat so bowed with misery.

‘So, Mistress Shore, what’s to become of you?’

I was careful to stand on the other side of the hearth. ‘I trot into pasture like an old ambler?’

‘Not thinking of a new saddlecloth, then?’ A leery look, unsuppressed by sorrow, crawled over my body.

‘No, my lord. And, to be honest, I find this conversation hurtful considering the man I love lies scarce cold across the yard.’ I hope Dorset did not know about last night’s visitor. Thank Heaven I had cleared the daybed.

He stood up and swaggered across. ‘Oh come on, chickie, use your head.’

Count to ten before I knee him? ‘My head, Marquis? I thought that was the last thing you were interested in.’

He had a crooked smile. ‘Still playing me like a ruddy perch, eh? Just like you did the King, but a man can grow tired of waiting.’ He ran a finger down my bosom. ‘When I come back from the funeral, I want you in my bed begging for it. Understand?’ He bent his head to kiss me. I let him but I did not kiss him back. He made a meal of trying to make me.

‘Begging, Elizabeth,’ he murmured, with a lift of lip. ‘Naked and begging.’

Bastard! I was shaking. Shaking with fury, hurt, fear. I don’t know how long I sat with my head in my hands before I made shift and went downstairs to tell Isabel and Lubbe to start packing. Then, trying to disregard the trembling of my fingers and another rush of grieving, I went to my bedchamber, unlocked the lodging inventory from my strongbox and carried it down to the solar. Unlike my Father’s strumpet, I would take nothing that was not mine; I might be an adulteress but I was not a thief.

‘Mistress.’ Isabel stood in the doorway, fiddling with the hem of her waistcloth; usually a sign of courteous disagreement. ‘I think you are doing a wise thing in leaving here.’ She was bursting to say more so I set aside the papers.

‘When I was over at the palace conduit this morning, there were two lads from Lord Hastings’ employ, fellows I often have a mite o’ gossip with, and they were a-saying that if the Queen becomes Keeper of the Realm, my lord has a ship standing by to take him and his men to Calais quick as a sneeze, and he’ll hole up there. I thought as how I’d better tell you in case his lordship has been forgetful in saying aught.’ She watched me squish my mouth sideways. ‘So keep a-packing, shall I?’

‘Yes, Isabel,’ I answered grimly. ‘Time to duck and make for the undergrowth.’

Oh, why did her news catch me on the raw? I was not some unjarred leech that needed to crawl from one man to the next, yet now I felt panic grab my innards, as though I was in open country, defenceless against attack. Would Hastings leave me with the kestrels circling?

All morning my little household laboured. Once the panniers were queuing in the hallway and the crammed wooden chest in my bedchamber stood ready for hauling on the morrow, I cajoled Master Beaupie from his perch at the Exchequer, and together we went through the inventorium so he might bear witness to my honesty. He paid me my allowance to the end of April and our business was done. Just one more night beneath the eaves of Westminster.

Heavy hearted, I walked round to farewell my little white mare, Bathsheba. She wickered as though she understood, gazing at me beneath her long lashes, but our discourse was interrupted by Princess Bess. She had just come back from riding.

‘Jane? Is that you?’ One of her plaits was out of its pins – a golden rope against her blue-black skirt. The cold wind had rosied her cheeks but her eyelids betrayed the scarlet of weeping. I hoped hard riding had given her comfort.

Shining up a smile so like her father’s, she strode across to embrace me.

‘I am making my farewells,’ I explained sadly. Bathsheba blew a warm huff into the hollow between my neck and shoulder and nudged me for a precious withered apple.

‘Really? I can ask my mother if you may still ride her.’

I shook my head. ‘That’s generous of you, your highness, but I need to set the past behind me.’

‘Oh lordy, you’re not going to do something rash and take the
veil, are you? You are still prodigiously lovely, you know. Just seeing you makes me feel like a carthorse.’

‘Nonsense.’ I took her hands. We looked at each other in mutual sadness. ‘Your father was so proud of you, dear Bess. It’s a pity you cannot wear the crown. What is wrong with this ill-fangled world?’

Merriment crept into her eyes. ‘Delicious treason, Jane. I’d make you my Lady Chamberlain. Oh, pest, I’d better go. I’m supposed to be fitted for my gowns. Blue velvet for the ride from the Tower and crimson for the coronation. Curse it, I’m crying again.’ Knuckling her eyes, she turned away. ‘Must go, Jane. Pray do not forget me.’

Have you woken to the sinister rustlings of human vermin? Fear of evil freezes you; your breath halts, every sense strains to discover truth amongst the overspill of dreams. I heard Isabel’s stifled shriek, her limbs thrashing on the truckle bed and the cruel thwack of knuckles on flesh. My own scream jammed in my throat. I reached for my candlestick as a weapon but the cursed thing crashed down. A calloused palm sealed my mouth. I struggled to poke my fingers up my assailant’s nostrils but he was more ox than human, and the press of sharp steel above my Adam’s apple settled the quarrel.