King's Fool (22 page)

She looked lovelier than ever with the pink colour creeping into her face again. “Have I not always loved you, Will, ever since I was sick and you used to make shadows of fantastic creatures by candle-light on my wall?”

I kissed both the little hands I held. “I know, dear heart, but, sweet as it has been, that kind of love will not satisfy me now.I have always loved you, Joanna, since the day I first saw you standing in the chapel doorway with flowers in your arms. Loved you and hungered for you so that neither success nor royal favour nor all the other things which I truly value can ever count against my hunger to possess you.”

She pulled my face down to hers, and kissed me long and tenderly. “Never think for one moment that I say this because I am now shorn of so much else,” she vowed, with tears in her eyes, “but that, I swear, is the completeness with which I, too, have loved you for a long time now.”

It was the moment of ecstatic happiness for which I had lived so patiently—even monkishly, as Henry often said. For the first time I held her in a lover’s embrace, untrammelled by pricks of conscience. Selfishly, I thanked God that she was homeless and penniless. There could be no betrayal to my first, best master if I took her and cared for her now. I pressed the softness of her body against the hungry hardness of my own, kissing her eyes and mouth and the whiteness of her throat, releasing her only when she was warmly responsive and half breathless. Then, because there was so much that we must talk of and so little time, I drew her down beside me on the window seat. “This proposed marriage with some Northamptonshire neighbour—does it mean anything to you that it is not to be?” I asked.

“Only unspeakable relief. He is a good man. My life would have been pleasant and easy. My father chose him carefully from the others, and then seemed to delay, making excuse that he needed me. I think he knew—”

“About us?”

She nodded. “And that any marriage such as he would be likely to arrange could be nothing but a duty to me. I should have married into some wealthy or titled family eventually, I suppose. But most fathers would not have—cared about my feelings.”

“You must know that I admire him more than any man I have ever known.” Joanna gave me a warm, grateful smile and, springing up from my side, said almost merrily, “And so, Will Somers, I am willing to marry you next week if you say so.”

I took her hand and swung it between us, grinning up at her as she stood before me. “Not next week, Joanna Fermor—but now, today,” I corrected firmly.

“Today!” she cried out. “By all the Saints, how masterful you grow! It must be associating with royalty!” The unashamed joy in her face suddenly changed to dismay. “But what priest of the Reformed Church would marry us, today or any day? You, the King’s jester—and me, the daughter of a man so recently imprisoned for offending against the King’s statute of Praemunire?”

“I know of one. And not far from here.”

“You are sure?”

“Not sure. But he was only too anxious to marry me to you once.When you so narrowly escaped that unspeakable Skevington, and he mistook me for the bridegroom.”

“You mean that round, jolly Parson Morton of St. Magdalen’s in Milk Street, with whose mistaken offer you tempted me here in this very room?”

“That same man. What a memory you have for names! I spoke to him in the Lane afterwards and found him to be a liberal-minded man. Let us go to him now, Joanna.” But though she sent for her cloak with a willingness which delighted me, when I had taken it from the servant and put it about her I detained her as I fastened it about her pretty throat. “It will mean secrecy—separation perhaps. All the things we hate. It will be necessary to trust each other utterly,” I had the honesty to remind her.

She did not answer in words, bless her, but pulled me gently towards the door and down the stairs, and hand-in-hand we walked the short distance to Milk Street.

“What a way to go to one’s wedding!” she giggled once, having slipped at the edge of a filth-filled gutter and splashed her already travel-stained stockings. And thinking, perhaps, of all the fuss and preparation there had once been for her first frustrated nuptials in the house we had just left.

“So be that we are going to it anyhow—at last!” I said fervently, drawing her more safely beneath the over-hanging eaves. “Though I am sorry you have had to choose between that shimmering bridal gown and me.”

I tugged at the raucous bell of the priest house, and Parson Morton himself appeared. “You once offered to marry me,” I reminded him, without waste of time.

He stared with surprised, bright eyes, but recognised me at once.“You are Will Somers, the King’s fool,” he said.

“And this lady is a niece of Mistress Brown of Aldermanbury—the same bride who was to have been married then.”

He pulled us inside and we told him our story, hiding nothing from him. “I heard of the trial. So many cruel things are done in Christ’s name…” he said ruminatively. “You wanted this fair lass when she was to have married young Skevington, though you kept it always in mind that she was your master’s daughter. But only now, when her family’s prosperity is lost, do you propose to marry her, which seems to me to spell real love.” He tramped about his small, dark room, fitting the thing together in his mind. Then fetched up before Joanna. “And you really wish this, my daughter?”

“More than anything, Reverend Sir,” she assured him.

“I should wait until Master Brown returns, I suppose, and consult him,” he muttered. But instead he took us into his church and left us while he went to light the candles and put on his vestments, and to call his old housekeeper and the sexton as witnesses. Joanna and I stood, handfast and quiet, in the gloom of that old building with its empty niches where statues of Our Lady and the Saints must so recently have stood. What had been growing in our hearts over the years was strong enough by now to wash out all need for words. But I remember whispering, “It must be a terrible thing for you to lose your lovely home—like being turned out of the Garden of Eden.” And Joanna squeezing my hand and whispering back, “You—always—will be my home.”

And then the solemn words of marriage were being said, and we were man and wife.

Afterwards, in the little vestry, when Thaddeus Morton brought out pen and ink to register our names according to the King’s new decree, he asked us where we lived.

“Greenwich, Hampton Court, Whitehall…” I answered airily. But he waved aside the vague grandeur of such names.

“Those are indeed the King’s palaces, but what place shall I enter as your married home?”

Joanna and I turned to each other with raised brows and laughed. We were forced to admit to him—and to ourselves—the absurd truth that we had none.

“My husband will find us one,” said Joanna, with large optimism—which was the beginning of her complete trusting.

“Say that first piece again,” I ordered. “I liked it.”

“My husband,” she repeated dutifully, with shining eyes.

“You are both crazed,” chuckled the good vicar of St. Magdalen’s.“But wherever you find a home I make no doubt the good God will bless it with abundant happiness. And when you have settled into it come back here so that I may baptise your children.”

MY HUSBAND WILL FIND us a home,” she had said, calm as the unruffled leaves on a lily pond. She, the gently reared daughter of a capable business man, putting her faith unquestioningly in a professional fool! Unutterably proud yet desperate, I prayed as earnestly as I had ever prayed for anything that I might never betray her touching trust in me.

And either because the Almighty listens to fools or because I had lived on my wits for years, before we had turned into the bustle of Cheapside an idea had come to me. “The Festings are going to Calais!” I said, pulling up short with her hand through my arm.

“Oh, Will, and they are wanting to sell their house,” she cried, quick to pick up my thought. “As we were riding to London he was telling me how wisely you had advised him about joining John, and how they must try to find a purchaser or tenant. And his careful Dutch wife hates the thought of leaving it to strangers.”

The Festings’ home was a narrow, gabled house with upper stories jutting out over Thames Street which Master Fermor had had built beside his wharf. Its frontage would seem dismal and noisy indeed to anyone accustomed to the wide, airy fields surrounding Neston Manor, but from the back windows there was a sunny ever-changing outlook across the busy Thames and southwards to the Surrey shore. And those windows, being Gerda’s, gleamed like crystal.

Their door stood wide and we found them packing house linen and clothing into three great cedar chests, assisted by Bart’s elderly clerk and a young maid who kept dissolving into tears at the thought of their departure.

“Why, Mistress Fermor!” exclaimed Gerda, curtsying as best she could with a bolster in her rosy arms.

“Mistress Somers,” I corrected, proud as Lucifer.

“Of all swift workers!” exclaimed Bart Festing admiringly, and dropping the rope with which he was lashing up a bundle of particularly precious household possessions in a sail, he sent Craddock, the clerk, for wine with which to celebrate.

They were genuinely glad. Gerda put my bride into the only available chair and fussed over her, and they both listened delightedly to my suggestion. “The master’s daughter living
here
in our humble home!” they kept saying.

“Tempora mutantur,”
I quoted sadly.

“And neither my father nor I have
any
home now,” Joanna reminded them.

“My poor pretty one.” Mistress Festing, who had no children of her own, put a motherly arm about her. “If this is what you both really wish, nothing could suit us better, could it, Bart?”

“There is no time to sell, and Gerda has worried the night through lest hurriedly accepted tenants ill-use our carefully chosen furniture.”

One had only to look round to see that, like many a merchant’s agent, he had bought good stuff in advantageous markets, and that everything had been kept polished with Dutch thoroughness. “Not woven tapestry as you both are probably used to in palaces and manors,” said Gerda, following my appraising gaze. “But all our walls are hung with good wholesome painted linen from Antwerp.And, oh, how thankful I shall be not to have to leave my best feather-bed and pillows to flea-infested strangers!”

On my insistence Bart and Craddock and I went across to his office on the wharf to agree a rental and to draw up a properly signed and witnessed agreement. “Your home will be here for you when you come back,” I said, trying to cheer him. “And it could be a
pied-a-terre
to shelter the master if we can get him out of prison.”

“You have hopes?” they both asked eagerly.

The all-powerful shadow of Thomas Cromwell seemed to blacken them all out. “I shall never give up trying,” I said cautiously.

As we came down the outside steps to the wharf trying to steady ourselves against the blustering wind, seamen and porters crowded about us. “Any fresh news, Master Festing?” they asked morosely. Some of them recognised me and called to me to tell the King, who so loved ships, that six good merchantmen were moored idle. It was always the same. Because one or two stories of my having been able to help the under-dog had got about the city and become household words like some of my absurdities, people seemed to think that I could approach the Tudor about anything. They never could realise that I had to choose my opportunity—and above all the King’s mood. But I could and did tell them that no matter who acquired the Fermor estates, a man with as much business sense as Cromwell certainly would not allow the wharf and all that valuable shipping space to stand idle for long. And because I happened to be a familiar figure in all the King’s palaces they believed my words as unquestionably as the gospels in Master Tyndale’s newly-printed Bibles, and took comfort.

And back to Whitehall Palace I must go, bridegroom or no bridegroom, leaving my treasure unenjoyed. The clock of All Hallows was striking noon, and the royal procession would be forming to go into hall for dinner. And the King would soon miss me. “I am sure our good friends will spare Craddock here to escort you back to Aldermanbury,” I said to my new wife, feeling about as inadequate as a pricked bladder.

But Joanna did not want to be escorted anywhere. She preferred to stay here in what was going to be her new home—if the Festings would have her. After all, they were her father’s people, and would not advise or interfere as the Browns might do. “If I shall not be an added burden to you at this busy time,” she said.

“My sweet lady, we are honoured,” Gerda assured her. “But you do realise, Master Somers, that we shall be sailing in three days’ time?”

“You cannot stay here alone when I am on duty, Joanna,” I said. Much as I liked to think of her here, in our own place, I felt that I should take her back to her aunt’s house where I knew she would be safe.

“There is Tatty, our willing little maid, crying her eyes out because we are going. And she has already taken a vast liking to you, Madam, and would, I am sure, ask nothing better than to stay and work for you.”

“And Craddock sleeps at the docks and will keep an eye on them,” Festing promised me.

And so it was arranged.

“Listen, my sweet,” I said, taking Joanna’s hands in mine.“The Cleves princess, Heaven help her, is due to arrive at Dover tomorrow, or—if the storm does not abate—by next day. From there she and milord Southampton, who is fetching her, and all the usual welcoming retinue will ride to London, breaking their journey for a night at the Bishop’s palace at Rochester and then setting out for the great official welcome on Blackheath. But the King has taken a notion to ride to Rochester with milord of Suffolk and one or two more of his cronies disguised as merchants, and so pay her a surprise visit there.”

“I thought it was all planned that he should meet her at Black-heath with all this elaborate reception we have heard so much about,” said Festing.

“I know. That is to be the official welcome,” I said. “But last night at supper his Grace was planning to pay her this surprise visit first.”

“But surely the poor creature will have been seasick and want to rest,” remonstrated kindly Gerda.

“And looking her worst, all ill-prepared,” put in my wife. “It doesn’t seem kind. Why must his Grace do this?”

Because she was showing more anxiety for some foreign princess than she had shown for herself, I kissed her worried brow. “‘In order to foster love,’ he told milord of Suffolk. ‘Or because you still love dressing up, you romantic old roisterer,’ jibed Suffolk, they both being full of sack and high good humour at the prospect of so unusual an outing. So as soon as they have word that the Flemish Princess has landed you may be sure they will set off for Rochester. And you may be equally sure that the moment they are over London Bridge I shall be on my way here.”

“To foster love?” enquired Joanna, with a provocative grin.

“Love like ours needs no fostering. For my own part, it is already full grown to the point of starving,” I said, reddening her cheeks with an ardent kiss before them all. “And so I warn you, that you may be prepared to solace me when I come.”

And so, striving to weigh my unlooked-for possession of her against that long delay, I took my leave, promising Bart Festing to send a quarter’s rent before he left for Calais. My tastes had always been simple, my expenses few. In the King’s service so much in victuals, travel and amusement was free. Save for a gift to my aunt in Shropshire, whenever I could find opportunity to send to her, there was no one dependent on me. Though I made it a rule to take no bribes, rich men who had enjoyed an evening’s fun and visiting foreign envoys frequently made me presents. My savings were considerable and lay snugly in the royal cofferer’s care. And when I got back to the palace my good friend John Thurgood, in whom alone I confided, offered to deliver the money for me. I think he was as desirous of meeting my bride as of doing me a service at this all-important juncture in my life.

“She is sweet as a field of spring flowers, and gay as sunshine,” he said, stretching himself out in my room on his return. “You are a lucky man, Will, but your constancy deserves it.”

“I would to God I could have won her fairly in any way but by her family’s misfortune,” I said. “And that I could keep her openly as my wife in some place where there are gardens and the things to which she is accustomed.”

“It may not be for long,” said Thurgood, trying to cheer me.“And ’tis a quiet nest for love.”

“Too quiet, perhaps, if Joanna frets too much about her father. And what to do for him I know not, John.”

“Nothing, I fear, with Bull Cromwell in power,” he sighed, getting up reluctantly to go about his own affairs. “Listen, Will. There will be little to do here until all this Blackheath pageantry is over, and higher level men than us, such as milord Marshal, will have all the managing of that. So I can well cover up your tracks here. You can easily be free to get away the moment the King and Suffolk and Sir Anthony Browne set off on this escapade of theirs for Rochester.”

I needed no second bidding. “Success or no success, Court life would have been a desert indeed without you, John!” I said, grateful for his years of ungrudging friendship and professional cooperation. And when he had gone, with a thwack on the shoulders and a ribald wish for my new married state, I had the temerity to visit the King’s own barber and then put out my fine mulberry velvet which had been ordered for the coming of the new Queen, and dressed myself with as much nervous fumbling as any bridegroom. “You are no Adonis. You can’t be fashionably fair like the Tudors and all those gallants who dye their hair with saffron to imitate them,” I told myself, peering anxiously into the silver-framed mirror which milady Mary had given me. “Your cheekbones are too high and your face too lean, but at least you’ve kept your figure and your eyes and teeth are good. Dressed like a gentleman of the more sober sort, you look the kind of man a woman might willingly acknowledge as her husband. But”—and here I came to the question which always nagged at the back of my mind—“could any woman in her heart want to have a husband who was the King’s fool?”

As one prospective bridegroom to another, and because I really wanted to, I went down into the courtyard to wish the King godspeed.He and the Duke of Suffolk and Sir Anthony Browne were already in their saddles, dressed in plain brown worsted with unfeathered caps and as conspiratorially excited as a trio of plump schoolboys.

“Do we look like a party of honest merchants?” Suffolk was asking, looking down at his unaccustomed garb self-consciously.

“Here’s Will. He should know, having lived with some of them,” cried Henry, at sight of me. “Do we look like honest merchants, Will?”

I viewed them with mock solemnity, walking critically around each, so that all the attendants and grooms began to titter. “You look like
merchants
, Harry,” I assured him. “But as to
honest
—well, let your consciences be the judge of that.”

“He must be alluding to you, Charles, for managing to keep your ward’s dowry by marrying her,” laughed Henry. “But, since we talk of disguises, if
we
look like merchants
you
look like the lord of a manor, this morning, Will. Whither are you going?”

“To my honeymoon,” I said, without hesitation.

“Then there are two of us.”

I went close beside him and laid a hand on his stirrup. “So I wish you happiness with all my heart, and pray you find the lady to your liking,” I said, in a sudden glow of affection for him. For all our sakes, I wanted this fourth marriage of his to be a happy one. And he knew as well as I how, even in the midst of our fooling, we sometimes said things in deep sincerity which strengthened the strange bond between us. “Where will you be spending
your
honeymoon, Harry?” I asked lightly, to cover our moment of emotion.

“Where else but at Greenwich, since it is conveniently on the Kentish side for my bride’s arrival,” he answered, all jovial with anticipation. “And where will Master Somers of Mummery Manor, in all his wedding finery, spend his?”

“In the City of London,” I told him promptly.

“An odd, public sort of place to choose for dalliance, surely?”

“But I chose it because only milord Mayor has jurisdiction there, and so your Grace cannot recall me before the moon be waned and the honey all tasted.”