King's Fool (5 page)

In Ipswich he pointed out to me the grazing land and house where Thomas Wolsey had been born, and I was amazed to see that it was no bigger than my Uncle Tobias’s farm. And there I beheld the great trading ships which I, being inland bred, had always longed to see. He decided to take his son’s advice, and in the yards on the River Orwell I watched the shipwrights laying down a new ship for him, and was allowed to clamber aboard and watch the massive timbers being bolted together for the deep, cavernous hold.

And never shall I forget the kindness I received at Neston when a travelling friar who had lain a night or two at Wenlock Priory brought me the news that my father was dead. About farm and buttery the dairy people did me small, simple kindnesses. That day Jordan somehow brought himself to admit gruffly that I had been of some use to him. My sweet young mistress had tears in her eyes when she spoke of my loss. And it was then that I discovered the warm heart beneath Emotte’s severity. “You have no home or parents now, poor Will,” she said, laying her hand on my arm in a rare gesture of emotion. “Because the good God has never given me the children I have longed for, you must come to me if there should ever be anything I can do for you.”

In spite of her protests and to her huge delight I hugged her hard, and no man can have dared to do that in years. “I have the best home in the world here at Neston,” I assured her.

My master, in his practical way, offered to lend me a horse to go back to Shropshire and see my friends and settle my father’s affairs, and I would gratefully have gone; but it was just at that time that I first noticed Mistress Joanna began to look pale and listless. Perhaps I noticed it before the others, because I looked at her so often from my seat at the lower table. “Even
you
cannot make her laugh any more,” whispered Emotte, beginning to grow worried.

“She will grow better as the warm spring weather comes,” prophesied Father Thayne to comfort us.

She made so good a pretence at welcoming her father home from a journey to Norwich just before Christmas and at exclaiming over the exciting parcels he had brought that for the first few hours he noticed nothing amiss. But at supper, when she scarcely spoke and sat toying with her food, I saw him glancing anxiously at her from time to time during his jovial account of his doings. Next day Emotte prevailed upon her to stay in bed, maids scurried upstairs with hot bricks and possets, and towards evening, while I was working dejectedly by candlelight, my master came to me.“Will, she is really sick,” he said. “Take my roan Swiftsure and ride into Northampton to Doctor Mansard. Bring him back with you at once. It is blowing up for a foul night, but you will know how to persuade him.”

I was up from my stool in a moment. “Are you afraid that it might be—”

“The same sickness that took my others? It could be. God knows she looks transparent enough.”

“Or the fever that Master John spoke of on board his ship?”

“I, too, had thought of that. A man, without being sick himself, can be a carrier, they say.”

“But it is surely too long since he was here.”

We were talking in quick, half-finished sentences, as I struggled into coat and boots. He must have felt how mutual was our anxiousness. “Here, take my cloak,” he said, dragging it from his own shoulders and setting it about my own. “I have told Jeremy to have Swiftsure ready saddled. And, Will,” he added awkwardly, “I know that you care as I would have you care—that you would never spare yourself in her service. If I have ever misjudged you in this matter…”

His worried voice tailed off, and I was out of the door and then out in the blustering night, his cloak warm and comforting about me. I am no great horseman and was always terrified of that wicked-eyed roan, but somehow I urged him through that night of lashing rain, by some miracle not breaking our necks in ruts or potholes. And by morning light Doctor Mansard was by my little lady’s bedside. He stayed at Neston for three anxious days and nights, caring for her with all his skill. Emotte nursed her devotedly. And by the end of a week the fever had abated and the patient smiled wanly and knew us all again. Her father must have told her that it was I who had fetched the doctor so swiftly, for she sent for me and thanked me, though the effort tired her.

There were no Christmas festivities at Neston Manor that year, but it was arranged that Master Fermor should take her to London in the summer.

“She grows stronger, and Emotte says she eats her food and takes the remedies Mansard ordered,” he told me. “But she is so quiet, so listless—so unlike my laughing little wench. I must be growing old, for I cannot seem to rouse her. Something seems to be worrying her.”

“Is it not possible that at a time like this she may still be fretting for her lady mother?” I suggested, out of my own experience.

We stood in silence. In that moment we were less master and clerk than two desperate men at the end of our resources. And then the idea came to me. “She used to laugh at a kind of play of shadows I made on the wall by candlelight,” I recalled. “Would you allow me, Sir, to try to distract her?”

“Go to her now, Will, with your inane foolery,” he said at once, but without much conviction.

I think Emotte was too worn out to make objections. And so I used to go to Mistress Joanna’s bedchamber every hour that I could spare from my work. By candlelight I would make a shadow with my hands against the wall. I invented grotesque birds feeding their young, rabbits sitting up to scratch their ears and dragons belching fire, until a small laugh would erupt from behind the half-drawn bed-curtains. By sunlight I would sing snatches of gay songs, make up doggerel about each member of the household, teach her deerhound Blanchette’s puppies to do tricks—anything I could devise to make her laugh and bring back the colour to her cheeks.

“Anything and everything until his head nearly rolls to his breast with weariness after a hard day’s work,” Emotte would say gruffly, her own face strained with lack of sleep. “Go to your bed and get some sleep, Will Somers, and may the good God bless you!”

The good God blessed us all, for the beloved daughter of the house, who made its heart and sunshine, grew strong and well again. By May Day we saw her dancing with the other girls upon the green. My master sent a messenger with the good news to his son and daughter-in-law in London, Jordan stopped cuffing his subordinates, old Hodge started singing to his sheep, maids and men-servants began courting again, and Father Thayne, who had prayed unceasingly, held a thanksgiving service. It may have lacked the grandeur of the priory I had been accustomed to, but to me, grateful upon my knees, it was the most profound
Te Deum
of my life.

ALTHOUGH MISTRESS JOANNA WAS restored to health the doctor would not hear of her going to London to visit her brother and sister-in-law and to be taken to Court. “Not with all that smoke-polluted air, and the crowded streets with their stinking gutters,” he said firmly. “Let her get strong first in the good country air, and no doubt her father can arrange to take her next year or when he next goes on business.”

A year seems a long time to wait when one is seventeen, and she had talked so often of the masques and tournaments which the Vaux side of the family had described, and of the splendid city of London of which her maternal grandfather, Sir William Brown, had been Lord Mayor. “Are you grievously disappointed?” I asked, after Doctor Mansard’s mandate had gone forth. She was sitting on the sunny terrace and I had just come back from combining exercise for Blanchette and her two puppies with an errand for Mistress Emotte in Towcester.

“Of course I should love to see all the fine buildings, and the Palace and great Abbey at Westminster. And King Henry and Queen Katherine, and the Court ladies’ lovely dresses,” she admitted wistfully. “But in some ways I am relieved that it is not to be yet.”

“Relieved?” I repeated, standing before her with a wriggling pup under either arm. We had grown to know each other so well by then that it seemed no impertinence to enquire into her affairs.

She explained then, slowly and reluctantly. “It was not only because of the tax which is owing that my father was going to London, nor so that I could visit my relatives. But so as to consult the Browns and the Vaux about arranging a suitable marriage for me.”

I let the pups slide down my body to the paving stones and, standing there motionless in the warm morning sunlight, it was as if an arrow loosed by some unseen archer had pierced my heart.Heaven knows why I had never before thought about what was so inevitable. Nor why we had never before spoken of it. It could have been reluctance on her part. And as usual, almost before I had recovered from the piercing blow, her aspect of the matter seemed to me more important than my own. “I have often wondered how it must feel to be a girl of good family and have a husband—arranged,” I managed to say, almost impersonally.

She bent over Blanchette, whose head rested against her knee, and began fondling her silken ears. “I think, perhaps, if our childhood homes have been happy, we try not to think of it,” she said.

I took a turn about the terrace and came back to her. “Do you know what man it will be?” I asked, hating him as I had never hated any being before.

“Not yet. I do not think my father has decided. It was to have been a young relative of my mother’s who would have inherited part of Sir William Brown’s estate. I always hoped so.”

“Because you loved him?” I asked, kicking viciously at an unoffending stone.

She looked up, puzzled, at my scowling visage. “Loved him?”she repeated, as if the question had scarcely occurred to her. “Not as you probably mean it. We were scarcely more than children when he was brought to stay here. So that we might get to know each other, I imagine. We used to go rowing on this little river and he gave me Blanchette.”

“So that is why you care for her so much. Then why are you not going to marry him?” I asked brusquely.

“He was killed in the French wars.”

I could have kicked myself, for this was yet another grief which I had never so much as guessed at. “I am sorry,” I said inadequately.

“I suppose it is difficult for a man, who can more or less make his own life, to understand,” she went on with spirit. “I
liked
him. We had interests in common. And just to have had the comfortable assurance that I should not have to go and live with some complete stranger who might be distasteful to me, or to play second wife to some rich old dotard as some of my friends have had to do—all this meant a great deal to me. To know that one must leave a home like this and perhaps go right away into some far county as my sisters have done is hard enough.”

I began to surmise why depression had set in upon her after her illness. “But your father loves you dearly. He would not make an unhappy choice for you,” I said, to comfort her.

She pushed Blanchette aside, got up with a sigh and went to lean against the terrace wall. “No, not
willingly,
” she said. “But we merchants’ daughters are assets of the business. All his friends who have traded successfully and built themselves comfortable manors try to marry their sons and daughters into the older, titled families. He saw to it that my elder sisters made what we call good marriages. It is a fair enough exchange, I suppose. The titled families want the money and we want to climb.” She paused to pick thoughtfully at some stonecrop on the wall. “But sometimes it means misery for the daughters, and spoils the sons—as it has spoiled John.”

I had never heard that cynical bitterness in her voice before. She seemed no more the laughing girl I had known. But if I was shocked by her outspoken comments I was learning at first hand my first valuable lesson about the power of ambition and the price which women are often called upon to pay for it. Our conversation had saddened me more than anything that had happened since I came. I joined her by the wall, staring out across the home meadow where the assistant falconer was training the fine hawk Master Fermor had given me, which up to that moment had been my pride, but he might as well have been scything grass for all I cared. “Then you will be leaving us?” I said blankly, although I ought to have been prepared to face up to it since the day I first saw her.

“Not going too far, I hope. I might well become mistress of one of these manors in Northamptonshire,” she said, turning to me with an attempt at a smile.

“Then you will have to take me with you, as your clerk or your steward,” I said, trying to play up to her.

“Or my jester. Have I not always said that you would make a marvellous jester, Will? Not that I am likely to marry into some ducal household and need one. Although it is true that Thomas Vaux keeps one. An amusing little dwarf, my brother says.”

I was not particularly flattered by the association of ideas. “I shall come with you in some capacity or other,” I insisted stubbornly.

“Will, Will, don’t be absurd!” she rallied me. “You never would leave my father. You think so much of him, so why should you want to?”

“Because I could not bear to stay here without you.”

The words were said. The truth was out. We stood facing each other, and a silence fell between us. For the first time we were man and maid, without any thought or barrier of difference in worldly position, and in that moment I am sure that she realised that I loved her. And that her instinctive liking for me was so strong that she dared not look ahead. For the first time the crazy hope leapt in me that in this modern world of opportunities, where merchants married into titled families, and cattle dealers’ sons rose to be Cardinals, I might one day, by hard work and quick wits, become socially worthy of her. It was a mad and dangerous moment. Controlled by the training of wise parents, she cut it short. She stooped and gathered up the two importunate puppies, preparing to depart. “Because he is a widower my father will be very loath to part with me. It may be months and months before I marry,” she said, gently putting our world back into sane and orderly perspective. And I felt that she was saying the words as much for her own comfort as for mine.

Strangely enough it was that same evening that Master Fermor came into the hall with a letter in his hand and a messenger whom we all recognised as Master John’s groom by his side. After bidding the man sit down with us and sup, my master walked to the top table looking mightily pleased and began reading the letter to his daughter, and while he was still eating I could see him giving orders about something to Jordan and Mistress Emotte, and heard him call for horses to be ready in the morning. Sunk in despair, I was ready to believe that letter and journey were all in some way connected with Mistress Joanna’s marriage. But as Jordan came stumping hurriedly out through the serving screens to attend to something or other, he thumped me on the shoulder in passing and said gruffly, “Master wants you in his room soon as supper is over. You’re in luck, Will Somers!”

And there, in the private sitting-room, I found the family in an unusual state of excitement. Mistress Joanna was setting a maidservant to polish her father’s best gold chain, he himself stood before the empty hearth, half in and half out of a doublet, while Emotte knelt before him with needle and scissors letting out the fastenings. It was a much grander doublet than I had ever seen him wear, with velvet bows and silk slashings. “Grown too heavy for it,” he was grunting, struggling to hold his breath while Emotte got him into it at last. “Last time I wore the thing must have been at John’s wedding.”

“You should have a new one made in case John or Lord Vaux takes you to Court while you are there,” Mistress Joanna admonished him.

“My dear foolish one, what time is there when I must be off first thing tomorrow morning?” he asked, chucking her chin in high good humour.

“Well, I believe Mottie is right. Old as it is, it looks well enough,” she decided with good reason. “How brown velvet becomes you, Sir! Charles Brandon, the King’s own friend, could not look more dignified, and he a Duke!”

“I feel like one of your peacocks with his tail spread,” grumbled her father, obviously not ill-pleased. He turned to settle the garment more trimly over his firm, hard belly, and caught sight of me standing all goggle-eyed in the doorway. “I’m off to London in the morning, Will, to wait on milord Cardinal,” he called out. “And you are coming with me.”

“I?” If he had told me I was to sing a duet with his Holiness the Pope I could not have been more taken aback. Incredulity, excitement, pride and abashed terror all jostled together in my mind. It was the second shock I had sustained that day. But then anything can happen in a prosperous merchant’s house.

“I must leave Jordan here to look after the farm,” he said. “And I need someone who can calculate and write a fair hand. Besides, you think quicker. If you keep your wits about you, you may prove of more use to me.”

“It is the scarlet silk,” explained his daughter, taking pity on my mystification, and almost pink with excitement. “Cardinal Wolsey is buying it from
us
this time.”

“My son was right, after all,” said Richard Fermor, as if the reinstatement of his son in his good opinion meant more to him even than the money.

To me all that mattered was that commerce, not matrimony, was taking him so urgently to London.

“And what is Will to wear?” asked Emotte the practical, who had been sitting back on her ankles with her mouth full of pins.

The thought that I was going to see the capital of England was beginning to seep joyously into my mind, but the thought that anyone there was likely to notice my clothes seemed ridiculous.

“There is the plain worsted John used to wear for Sabbaths before he grew so tall,” she suggested. “I folded it away myself and could lay my hands on it.”

I was thankful that it was she and not Mistress Joanna who had thought of anything so utterly unwelcome to me.

“It would only cause delay, Sir,” I pointed out before they could discuss the matter further. “I will brush the good suit you gave me last year, and go at once and see about any papers you may need.”

“And while you are about it, make sure the saddle bags are properly packed,” said my master, obviously relieved. “I am sure to be able to get a new suit of some kind for you in London.”

“And I will see to it that I earn it,” I called back from the door, being caught up in the general excitement which makes for friendly informality between master and man.

I worked until all hours making sure that everything was in order for our journey, and scarcely slept that night for excitement. And so special was the occasion that half the farm hands and servants were gathered out in the courtyard to bid us goodbye. Even Mistress Joanna had risen early.

“I feel a brute,” I said to her penitently, when she had embraced her father and we had moved out of the way of his roan’s restive hooves while he was giving some last-minute instructions to Jordan. “I, Will Somers, a nobody, going to see all those fine things you talked of while you, the Mistress of Neston, have to stay here!”

“She will be better here. Mistress Emotte and I will look after her,” promised Father Thayne, as the four of us stood in a little group apart.

“And you must remember
everything
, Will,” insisted Mistress Joanna gaily, trying to hide from us that her blue eyes were awash with tears of disappointment. “Notice the Queen and the little Princess and all the great personages we are always hearing about—the kind ones and the pompous ones and the funny ones—and when you come back you must keep us amused for weeks imitating them all in hall. Try to see the King himself.”

“And the Cardinal,” I added, strutting a pompous pace or two and sticking out my meagre paunch.

And so we were all laughing when we parted. Save that when a stable boy brought my sturdy little horse I bent a knee and asked our good Father for a blessing, suddenly feeling that I should have much need of it.