Mistress to the Crown (46 page)

‘You watched?’ I sniffed back my tears. This was absurd. Lynom’s caring about my silly lavender was making me cry more. And he was wearing his stupid grin.

‘Aye, and in case you are wondering why I never answered the door when you knocked that day, it was because there’s been this widow in the street forever pestering me because she knows I lack a wife.’

Why had he paused? What was he going to say? What mischievous Divinity gives a man’s smiling eyes the capacity to stir a woman’s blood, set her pulse racing and excite her heart?

‘And … and the uncommon sense?’ I gasped, my voice scarcely my own.

‘Why, because you had the courage to destroy King Edward’s letters even though they were your most precious possessions. And, Elizabeth …’

I blinked up at him through my wet lashes.

‘I hoped perhaps that in burning those letters you were setting the past behind you.’

‘For what purpose?’ I asked huskily.

He lifted his hand to my cheek, touching the moisture of sorrow as though it was precious to him. ‘So that maybe you could fall in love again. With me. And though I am neither a king nor lord—’

‘Whoa,’ I exclaimed, setting my fingers upon his lips, my heart both joyful and frightened by this madness. ‘Trust a lawyer to think of precedents.’

His laughter warmed my fingers and he snatched my hand aside and kissed the palm. ‘Wretch, let me finish. I was going to say you wouldn’t have to share me, Elizabeth. Is that a convincing argument for you? I’ll make a deposition now if you like, swear on the Gospels if it pleases you. I have adored you from the moment you entered my life. I love you, Elizabeth Lambard.’

I stared at him, my breath caught. ‘You love me?’

‘Unquestionably.’

King Richard’s Crown Solicitor in love with scandalous Mistress Shore? With me?

I must have looked moonstruck. I felt all manner of emotions. Amazement mingled with joy, but fear and uncertainty too. Love gives us such power over others. This would make him vulnerable.

‘Is the jury still deciding in that contrary head of yours, Elizabeth? Is your heart free to love again.’

I was wary of telling him my feelings. Not yet. I wanted to protect him.

‘My beautiful Elizabeth?’ I recognised the urgency in his voice, read the hunger in his eyes, and I felt an answering desire. ‘I want you so much.’

I was no virgin, no wife, no mistress to any other. Why, I could please myself and him. And suddenly withholding did not matter anymore. What was it Ned had said: ‘
Take my hand and dance, Mistress Shore, dance before the music is over
.’ If this intimacy between captor and prisoner was a temporary foolishness, I no longer cared.

‘Thomas Lynom.’ I wrapped my arms about his neck.

We kissed. He with as much skill as Hastings and more sweetness than Ned. And then in a trice he had the blankets on the floor, for the palliasse ropes would not have carried us both, and he was thrusting up my petticoats and kissing me between my thighs. I do not know who was more hungry, he or I. I was burning for him when he took me. It was a relief, such wondrous pleasure, to feel him slide inside me, and there was no closing of eyes, no looking away. We were gazing in triumph at one another as we came to that little death.

And when we were sated, he collapsed on his back with a gasp of satisfaction and a smile that would have reached to Canterbury.

‘You are good,’ I said. ‘Very good.’

‘Better than the King?’ he asked.

“Better than your one, that’s for sure.’

He rolled on top of me. ‘Had you ever kissed a lawyer before?’ he murmured against my lips.

‘No,’ I gasped. ‘I swore I’d never let one …’ He stifled my answer and then he slid his palms about my cheeks and made me
look at him. ‘I am in earnest, Elizabeth Lambard, and you don’t believe me, do you? I-love-you.’

Men can lie, but Lynom. There was truth in his face and he wanted the same from me.

Prison, too much time to think, to fret, to ache, to regret, to dream, to … O God, how complex we humans are. I gazed at my captor, unsure, uncertain, humbled, dazed, stumbling.

‘Tom,’ I pleaded.

‘You want me to say it thrice. Come, love me, Elizabeth, as I love you.’

One word, a nod? Was it so much to give? Instead I retreated again. How could I burden him with loving me?

‘No, sir,’ I pushed him away and sat up. ‘This is a mistake. I have only a past, no future. Loving me will destroy you. And I’m not being cruel. I. I respect you too much to encourage you in your folly.’

He shook his head and the love shining in his eyes made my heart ache more. ‘Too late, I’m afraid. And it’s not infatuation. I’m too old for that.’

‘Oh, Tom’ I whispered. No man was too old to be infatuated, but if his love was pure, I did not deserve his trust. Tears overcame my search for uncommon sense, grief for a future that would never be.

‘Come here!’ He drew me back into his arms, offering a loving harbour for a little space. ‘I knew you’d argue. Could have put money on it.’

I mopped my eyes with my sleeve. ‘Isn’t there some wench pining up in—’

‘Sutton-upon-Derwent,’ he said in a thick Yorkshire brogue that made me smile. ‘There now, you are feeling better. As I said, there’s no sharing for you this time. No other women in my life. Hell, imagine two like you.’

I fisted his shoulder in play, unable to … well, how can you put into words how wonderful, miraculous, humbling it is to have another human being care for you against all odds?

‘Tom, for the little time I have left, I give my heart into your keeping.’

‘Good enough. But all this talk of dying.’ Now it was his turn to take a step back. I thought he was regretting his recklessness, but it was duty that was tugging him away. He had lied about sharing. He had a loyalty to the King. ‘The Chancellor, sweetheart … I have to go now.’ I think he read the sudden bleakness in my face.

‘Of course.’ We stood observing each other like some gauche, young couple. ‘You are a good man, Tom Lynom,’ I said.

‘I’m persevering,’ he said. ‘I’ll call in tomorrow evening. Don’t go away!’

But next day he came rushing in at noon as though he was bursting with child.

‘Buckingham confessed his alliance with Elizabeth Woodville and Margaret Beaufort before he died. He denied your involvement.’

I swayed, thankful, so thankful.

Elizabeth was out of reach, but Lady Margaret …? I remembered her smallness, the mouse eyes always watchful. I heard Ned’s chuckle: ‘
If I had fallen in love with plain Meg, we might have united Lancaster and York. But, heigh, I didn’t
.’

‘Will Lady Margaret be executed?’ I asked.

‘Headed? Lord love you, no. Her husband, Lord Stanley, is in favour again so she’s to be given into his hands and strictly … kept. Elizabeth!’ Of a sudden, the Crown Solicitor was gripping me by the shoulders. Some revelation had exploded like Greek fire in his mind. ‘That’s the answer, my love.’

And he left before I could question him further.

With the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls over, Will had more time to stay with me.

‘They say that Buckingham pleaded to see the King, hoping to sue for mercy, but Richard refused to see him.’

‘I doubt there will be any reprieve for me, then,’ I said sadly after we had prayed together. ‘If the King believes Dorset and I were lovers, maybe I’m some sort of hostage. I reckon if Dorset and Tudor cause more trouble, I’ll be sentenced.’

‘If it is God’s will, then—’

‘Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day?’ I finished wryly. ‘But what if God and I do not share the same agendum, Will?’

Hurling a don’t-mock-the divine scowl at me, he rose from his knees. ‘Trust and faith, Elizabeth. Maybe this imprisonment is a candle to bring enlightenment to your soul. Anyway, I’ve things to do. Jack will visit you later.’

‘I don’t want to see him, Will.’

‘I think you should, Elizabeth, he has something to say to you.’

Jack looked as uncomfortable as a chicken in a fox’s jaws. Was it the stairs that had made him pale?

‘You’re not ill, are you?’ I anxiously gestured him to my three-legged stool. Had the physician found a lump beneath his skin or. ‘It’s not one of the children, is it?’

‘Woman, will you let me get my breath!’ And get some words strung together, by the look of him. ‘Lizbeth, I said something to disparage you last night.’

I managed to laugh. ‘You’re not the first or last, Jack.’

His hands fumbled with his hat brim. ‘Sir Edmund Shaa grabbed me aside afterwards and chewed my ear for it, calling me ingrate, and when I asked him what in God’s name he meant by it, he raged some more. The crux is that he told me what you did
for Father and how our family would have been paupered but for you. No shop for me, no living for Rob, no priesthood for Will and no house at Hinxworth. So I’m truly sorry, Lizbeth. All these years since Shore turned you out, I have thought ill of you.’ He rose awkwardly. ‘Can you forgive me?’

Tears gathered behind my eyelids. ‘You had a sister who would not play by the rules, Jack. It can’t have been easy. Besides, I have to thank you for standing bond for me. Pax?’ I held out my arms.

For a moment he hesitated, turning his hat in his fingers and then he tossed it aside and hugged me to his heart.

‘Pax, Lizbeth.’

Tom had a cunning edge to his expression when he visited me after supper. He had found a fur-lined mantle that Ned had given me and insisted I kiss him for it. I did so willingly and might have given him greater thanks but he set me gently back. Clearly there was more to this visit because he began to prowl about the room as men do when they are about to lecture women.

‘Elizabeth,’ he exclaimed, ‘I’ve been thinking a great deal about the problem of getting your property back and how to convince the King you’re no longer a threat.’

I waited politely for him to come to the point, expecting some legal argument, but he looked round at me with the mischievous expression that lawyers wear when they are about to surprise a jury.

‘Since Lady Margaret’s lord is now her gaoler, why not you and I?’ All could be resolved if you agree to marry me.’

My gasp might have been heard in Southwark. Marry? King Richard’s Crown Solicitor? I shook my head in wonder. No man spoke lightly of marrying. Thomas Lynom was offering me
his life, casting away all he’d achieved. His commitment to me greater than to his king. It was old-fangled chivalry and a gift too precious to accept.

I shook my head and said gently, ‘You and your sense of fair play, Tom. If it will ease your conscience, I’ll write a will before they dispatch me bequeathing all to you, even Hercules and the mice in the cellar!’

His forehead creased but thankfully he was amused. I should have hated to bruise him.

‘No, be serious, Elizabeth,’ he said, folding his arms in business-like mien. ‘If you were at liberty now and I asked you to be my wife, would you consent?’

Marry again? I had never thought to do so. Could I be all his? In accepting, I was giving away my freedom, dubious as it was. But Tom wasn’t Shore. With Tom, there would be a meeting of minds, a house joyful with laughter, maybe a child. The loving family I’d always dreamed of.

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘In those circumstances, yes, I might.’

‘See! he exclaimed. And, then, it was as though sunshine lit the shadows between us. Oh, God forgive me, I shouldn’t have agreed. I was a contagion that would infect him, yet he seemed so determined, so resolute.

‘My beautiful, darling Elizabeth. This may be the very way to free you. I’ll write to the King. I swear I’ll get you out of here.’

I shook my head sadly, but his loving kindness had already warmed the lonely places of my life. At last there were no words, only lips and touch. The feel of his arms protecting me against the cold, against the world. I forgot the cell about us. There was only him.

I have never known a man to give so generously. Such love was in his eyes, such love I gave from mine, that in our coupling was a sweetness that I had never known before, and the resonance, a
feeling of great wellbeing stayed with me, as though his touch on the strings of my soul still lingered.

Sing, oh! my love, oh! my love, my love, my love
,

This have I done for my true love
.

We exchanged vows and then we prayed that God would bless us.

A week later, Tom’s footsteps raced faster than ever upon the stone stairs.

‘Read this!’ he exclaimed joyfully. ‘It’s the copy of a letter from the King to Chancellor Russell.’

Had Tom been given some higher post?

… our servant and solicitor, Thomas Lynom, marvellously blinded and abused with the late wife of William Shore, now being in Ludgate Gaol by our commandment, hath made contract of matrimony with her, as it is said; and intendeth to our full great marvel, to proceed to effect the same. We, for many causes, would be very sorry that he be so disposed; and pray you, therefore, to send for him, that ye may goodly exhort and stir him to the contrary
.

The letter drooped in my fingers. I needed to tell Tom to quit my life.

‘No, don’t be in the dumps, read the rest!’

And, if ye find him utterly set for to marry her …
’

My heart began to race.

… then if it may stand with the law of the church, we be content (the time of marriage being deferred to our coming next to London) that, upon sufficient surety being found of her good a-bearing, ye do send for her keeper, and discharge him of our commandment by warrant of these; committing her to the rule and guiding of her father or any other, by your discretion …

Laughing, he swung me into the air, round and round and round.

‘You’re to be freed, Elizabeth.’

One month later Tom and I were married at the door of St Leonard’s Church with Will to bless us, and my family to hear our vows. Chancellor Russell gave the sermon and Sir Edmund Shaa, Dame Juliana and Margery were among the guests. Juliana swore she would be godmother if I should soon conceive a daughter.

Her remark set the wheels in Tom’s mind a-turning. ‘Lizbeth,’ he murmured that night as he slid naked into our marriage bed and pulled the bedhangings to against the cold. ‘Should you like to have a babe?’