Mistress to the Crown (12 page)

‘I noticed her highness was wearing one of my women’s girdles. Was that your doing, my lord?’

His forehead puckered as if the remark was not worthy of his attention. ‘No, I believe Lady Brampton presented it to her grace. Pray sit down, Elizabeth. I need to talk to you.’

Apprehensive, I made myself comfortable on a cross-legged chair and, with mounting dismay, watched him prowl across to the hearth and turn.

‘Elizabeth, you and I have come to a crossroads.’

I had anticipated this. But not so soon. Nothing lasts. I know that. The petals of the violet shrivel; its perfume lingers only in the memory.

‘You want no more to do with me?’ Had I behaved inappropriately tonight? Did I still lack the bedroom skills to please him? Or was I some matter to be tidied up before he left for France?

‘Stop it!’ he scolded. ‘I see all manner of thoughts flitting through your mind. Of course your company is a delight, my dear, but I can no longer be your lover. You need a younger man.’

‘But you are—’

‘Older than you by almost twenty years.’ I had thought him scarce forty. Astonishment must have blazed across my face for he added: ‘How kind of you to look surprised.’

‘I am, I truly am. But, please, do not think that—’

He held a finger to his lips. ‘
Doucement
, little one. Our arrangement was temporary as we both agreed.’ He drew a deep breath and I should have expected what came next. ‘Out of loyalty to me or because of your sense of virtue, you have already said no to the King of England. Tonight you have a chance to reconsider.’

‘
Tonight
?’ Deep inside me, excitement began to stir but it was shackled by a suspicious anger. ‘Was this your agendum all along, my lord? I know the man supposed to play Helen did not break his ankle.’

‘Yes, you are right, he didn’t. The opportunity was provided at royal request and now it is up to you, Elizabeth.’ He took a taste of wine, watching me over the glass. ‘I have brought the horse to water. You do not have to drink.’

So, broken in for the next rider, I was to be sold on.

‘I trusted you, my lord.’ Hurt underscored each word. My hand shook as I set down the glass. I intended to leave but he stepped into my path. ‘
Please-let-me-pass
!’

‘No!’ he said, holding up his palms. ‘You must hear me out and … and stop looking like an outraged virgin in a soldiers’ bath-house!’

I sat down but I kept my back poker-stiff.

He dropped on his haunches beside me and his voice was gentler. ‘Elizabeth, you offered yourself to me for no other reason than you wanted to learn and, by Heaven, I was happy to teach. All you asked of me was the name of a worthy lawyer, and in this world of venality I found that unselfishness remarkable, a breath of purest air. Now I am asking a favour. You have a choice tonight. The favour I ask is that you do not make your decision rashly.’

‘A choice? Do I?’ Disbelief spiked my voice; tears mustered behind my eyelids.

‘Of course, you do, my dear.’ He set a reassuring hand across mine. ‘You can go back to your husband before curfew and nothing more will be asked of you ever again.’ Back to my little kerchief of bleak space beyond the partition? A future of respectable celibacy – the worsted world of William Shore and lecherous Ralph the Younger?

The haughtiness left my spine and I stared unhappily down at my lap like a chastened child. His thumb scuffed my wrist. ‘Can you not see that Life is challenging you, Elizabeth? Are you going to ride into the joust or watch from the crowd with everyone else?’

‘Christ’s mercy!’ I rose to my feet in anguish. ‘I
am
everyone else. His grace said the awe would wear off but it hasn’t. I am
nobody
, my lord.’

Hastings stayed where he was. ‘Elizabeth, my dear, King Edward can have any woman in this entire kingdom – and he desires
you
.’

‘Ha! Only because he saw me naked at Gerrard’s Hall!’ I exclaimed in disgust, rising and pacing to the window. ‘I am a toy on a stall. He just wants what you have, like a child that cannot bear to be left out.’

I heard the rustle of taffeta sleeves. He had climbed to his feet.

‘You’re wrong. He wants your company because he enjoyed the supper with you at Gerrard’s and you gave him cakes for his children. Gave, not took. You were yourself, open and honest.’

I knuckled away the moisture at the edges of my eyes and stared up at the darkening sky. The King’s face came into my mind. Teasing, challenging but with a kindness, too – he had not ravished me at Gerrard’s Hall.

Wasn’t this the miracle I had longed for all my life? The chance to be someone, to make a difference? But how many years in Purgatory would this cost? A housewife like me being offered temporal power? Wasn’t this an offence against God’s order?

Hastings came to stand beside me. ‘Can you feel
no
alchemy with Ned?’ Alchemy? An attraction that had my pulse racing and my heart beating like a tabor? ‘
Elizabeth
?’

‘I daresay he might be goodly company.’

Hastings started laughing and I turned upon him. ‘I am in earnest about this. I am not some strumpet you’ve plucked out of the gutter.’

‘I know you are not, but, Christ, my dear, calm down!’ With an arm about me, he turned me towards the open window. ‘Try and look beyond the horizon.’

I stared up at the huge feast of stars and planets stretching into infinity and remembered as a little girl looking up at that self-same canopy of sky and daring to dream. What had happened to that hopeful child? Was she still crushed inside me?

‘You will be good for Ned because you will be doing this for the right reasons.’

‘Are there “right reasons”, my lord?’ I chided, stepping away from him. ‘Aren’t royal concubines supposed to be greedy, selfish bitches? They already say that about the Queen, his lawful wife. What will they say about
me
?’

‘That’s up to you.’ He lidded the air with his palms. ‘Stay calm.’

‘Lord’s sake,’ I exclaimed, looking around in panic. ‘Is his grace behind the arras, listening to all this?’

‘Indeed not! He is above such things and so am I. However, you would do well to keep your voice soft.’

Lest servants heard and carried the tittle-tattle to those who would pay for it? I wanted none of this. ‘Supposing his grace finds one night enough, my lord?’ I asked wearily. ‘Even one night will ruin me if word of this reaches Mercers’ Hall.’

‘Elizabeth, it may be one night, it may be one year. But think of the challenge and what it could bring you.’

‘What will it bring you, my lord?’

Hastings’ eyes glittered. Had I provoked anger or courtly amusement?

‘I am requesting you to do this for the good of the realm.’ Reading disbelief in my face, he added, ‘No, I swear to God that’s the truth. I … I try to do my best.’ With a sigh, he drew his fingers wearily across his brow, searching for the words to persuade me. ‘Listen, Elizabeth, when I was not much older than you are now, his grace’s father, the Duke of York, asked me to become his son’s shadow. He wanted me to make sure the lad didn’t fall into bad company. I have been trying to do that ever since and at times I have failed badly. I am asking you to become Ned’s friend because I think you would be wholesome and good for him, and for all of us.’

I was to be some kind of patriotic oatcake?

Someone’s polite knock stopped me saying that aloud. Hastings dealt with the interruption, a brief, muttered exchange.

‘The King’s servant?’ I asked.

He nodded reluctantly and stayed in my path to the door. ‘Please, Elizabeth,’ he said eventually, breaking the silence of hurt that lay between us. ‘You can do much good, for yourself and for the kingdom. I had far rather you were Ned’s mistress than the greedy whores Dorset tries to foist upon him.’

‘I don’t know,’ I whispered, shaking my head as if I could toss this dilemma from my temples. It was hypocrisy for me to plead a sense of honour; I was already an adulterous wife.

‘Sweetheart!’

I turned anguished eyes upon him and watched him clasp and raise the cross he wore around his neck. ‘Within this is a fragment of the True Cross. I swear to you that unless you turn the King against me, which God forbid, I shall stand your friend until my dying day.’ He stared at me in hope, his quiver of arguments empty at last.

The King of England’s mistress! A clever woman might wield more power than London’s Lord Mayor. But did I have that artfulness? Did I want that authority or wish to live in fear of the Queen’s malice? No! But what I did want was
my freedom
.

At last I recognised the truth. Tonight could be the price of severance from Shore!

I stared wide-eyed at the open window light and then at Hastings. The Lord Lieutenant of Calais was watching me like a dog hoping his mistress would reach for her boots. A walk? A walk? And if I did not walk towards King Edward’s bedchamber, would Hastings’ friendship swiftly unravel?

‘Do you wish some time alone to make up your mind?’

‘But the King is waiting, isn’t he?’ I answered caustically, as I picked up my cloak.

Taken off guard by my change of humour, the King’s great friend stared at me shrewdly, trying to estimate my capacity for rebellion.

‘Are you sure?’ Then he realised the ambiguity. ‘Or Shore, but not for much longer.’

My face told him it was a poor jest in the circumstances and he had the grace to look contrite. I lifted my fingertips to his cheek; the lines of care were those of loyalty.

‘I can see why he loves you so,’ I stated. ‘You would give your life for him.’ And he was giving him me as well. But I understood now what the Queen had meant.

I was the Trojan Horse.

II

Like a great beast, the palace was easing down onto its haunches for the night as Hastings led me, an icily silent sacrifice, through the torchlit passageways. The guards at the arched portal to the King’s Chamber did not bar my way. They stared ahead as though I was invisible. And would I become invisible to my family and friends by giving my body to the King?

‘My blessing on you.’ A fatherly squeeze of my steeled shoulders, then Hastings stepped between the soldiers and thrust open the door. Oh, how I hated him at that moment.

Before me, the chill, ceremonial chamber was in shadow, save at one end where two great floor candles flickered either side a door. The soft cadences of a single lute came from there. So I was to be lured in with sweet music like a besotted insect. To my right, I espied a huge bed with turgid murals flanking its dark canopy, and a painting of an ancient coronation louring from above. Glinting stretches of battles decorated the wall that faced me.

A manservant slid from the shadows behind me and strode to the slit of light streaking out from beneath the inner door. I started to follow and gasped as a rat ran across my foot. Mercy
God! My resolution faltered. For an instant of weakness, I looked back. Hastings’ face was in shadow as he seized both ring handles and drew the doors closed behind me.

‘Mistress?’ The servant had knocked upon that inner door. Now it was open, blazing with candlelight and silhouetted within it, dark and faceless, like the Devil waiting for my soul, stood the King himself. His long shadow fell across my path and I had no choice but to walk towards him.

And to give myself strength, I conjured guardian angels on my either hand – the young, ambitious girl who had daydreamed of greatness before she married Shore, and the wanton, reckless Eve whom Hastings had bestirred.

The King’s hand fastened round my fingers.

A silken robe, the hue of the wild woods, the green of the hunt, was knotted loosely about his body. I breathed in musky perfume as his lips brushed my wrist and he drew me into that bright, warm chamber. How long would it take him to unpeel my clothing and use me? Would it be done on the daybed, against the door or on that monstrous bed? And afterwards, a mutter of thanks as he fastened back his points? Probably. With some trinket or a purse. Maybe he would order me back for tomorrow evening.

‘Helen of Troy, how generous of you to come,’ he murmured, offering me a broad grin and the gift of a perfect white rose. ‘Not wearing the “devils’ windows” then?’

‘No, your highness.’ I blinked, startled by the reality of the flesh and blood Achilles who stood beside me. In a few minutes he would be thrusting inside me.

The music ceased abruptly with a twang and a muttered apology as the lutanist swiftly tried to replace the string.

‘Hope Will didn’t have to twist your arm?’ my new lover asked.

What a false question! As if the King of England, six foot three and wearing his shirt loosely laced, needed reassurance.

‘Not exactly, your highness,’ I replied gravely, wriggling my left shoulder as though it had been wrenched. ‘I had to wait an hour for the awe to rub off again.’

It took him a moment to remember. ‘And has it all gone?’

‘Not quite.’ Raising the rose to appreciate its perfume, I looked over its petals at him. ‘During the escape from Sparta, I threatened to make a counter-tenor of Paris. Since he is your stepson I daresay it is a hanging matter.’

‘Afraid so,’ he replied, shaking his head at my folly. ‘And you have already threatened the King of England in similar fashion. However, the King decrees he will grant you clemency if you agree to take supper with him now.’

Oh dear, all this banality. I wished he’d just throw my skirts up and have done. If the coupling proved too drawn out, how was I going to fake the passion he’d require to flatter his skill?

I bit my lip in a seductive way. ‘It might be a “Last Supper” for me, your grace.’

‘I am certainly hoping it won’t be, Mistress Shore.’ His warm hand slid behind my shoulder blades. ‘Now be at ease. I can’t have you looking like Jehane of Arc about to be put on trial. Come and sup.’ With a possessive arm about my shoulders, he led me to a table set before a recessed windowseat. Platters of viands, fruit and sweet pastries awaited us.

‘Please.’ He indicated that I should sit down and he slid in beside me. I was enclosed among the opulent, satin cushions, a luxurious cage. Even the toothpicks set beside the plate we were to share were made of gold and pommelled with gems.