The Innocent (17 page)

Aveline and Piers, seated under a rich tapestry canopy of honor in the center of the high board in the hall, had little to say to each other. Piers stared sullenly into his silver beaker when he was not openly ogling the breasts of women at the tables below the high board, a fact that did not go unnoticed among Mathew’s guests. Aveline, to her credit, kept up a bright stream of conversation with John Lambert, an important mercer and business partner of Mathew Cuttifer, seated beside her. He was one of the aldermen of London and also had the ear of the king, hence his position of honor at the feast.

Lambert’s daughter Jane was one of the celebrated beauties of London and she, too, had been invited to the marriage with her merchant husband, Master Shore. Anne saw that Mistress Shore’s husband looked none too pleased with the glances his wife’s beauty drew, even though she sat with eyes modestly downcast, gracefully attending the tricky task of keeping her veil out of the sauce on the dish of larks in front of her.

Master Shore was a plain, careworn man, at least ten years older than his young wife, while Jane Shore herself was the model of current fashionable beauty. Anne could not judge Jane’s height, since Jane was seated, but there was more than a suggestion of sinuous curves beneath the tight-fitting, low-necked gown of expensive embroidered satin.

Delicate, pale eyebrows hinted Jane was blond, though it was hard to tell since her high forehead was capped with one of the lower-crowned hennins that completely hid her hair. Radiant skin, a pure oval face, and a mouth that was sweetly soft and pink, rather than red, gave an impression of gentle grace but then, when she looked up, very large, very dark blue eyes brought her face to life.

Anne had never seen a more beautiful woman yet, oddly, she felt not the least twinge of jealousy.

Perhaps it was the way Jane laughed that made her so likable?

“Anne, please take some wine to Master Shore and his wife. My husband particularly wishes to salute Master Lambert’s charming daughter.”

Anne jumped. It was odd, uncanny, to have inner thoughts expressed by someone else. She hurried to obey Lady Margaret, and as she poured the sweet hippocras for their honored guests, Jane’s husband bowed low to his hosts at the high table, calling out, “Such excellent wine—and such a happy day. We drink to the bride and groom!”

“The bride and groom!” The cheers echoed around the hall.

But as Anne turned to hurry back to the high table, Jane spoke to her. “I should like some candied violets when you next return.” Jane Shore’s sea-blue eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Anne’s face.

Anne found herself smiling warmly, and when Jane Shore smiled in return there was a moment’s deep connection between them, just as there had been between Anne and the king that day in the abbey. The suddenness of it was startling—Anne believed she had successfully forgotten the king since the night of Deborah’s visit. Now, three faces, her own, Jane’s, and the king’s, seemed to melt into one. They were all bound together, the three of them, she was certain of that; bound by fear made from treachery, and made from love. It was forming, this thing, getting closer, gathering power, though she did not yet have the strength to see it clearly.

For a moment Anne forgot what she was doing until she heard her name called. Melly was beside her, discreetly trying to attract her attention. “Anne, Lady Margaret says please make sure the musicians are given no more wine.” Anne bobbed a quick curtsy to Jane Shore as she hurried off to do Margaret’s bidding.

Musicians had been hired to entertain the gathering during the meal, and at first they had played and sung tuneful but sedate airs of courtly love and undying devotion. But as the day wore on, and course followed course—over thirty separate sets of dishes were laid before the guests—the music had become much faster and earthier.

The tone of the feast was changing, everyone eagerly anticipating the moment of the official bedding of Aveline and Piers as the short winter day drew to its close. Restraint would be abandoned when darkness fell, as everyone knew. Margaret had other plans, however, though she wasn’t quick enough to stop one of the minstrels kneeling down beside the bride and striking up a well-known round about chastity and the need for a husband to control his wife’s lust, lest it wear him out.

Delighted, the crowd joined in as each chorus became broader and broader, while Aveline sat, frozen with embarrassment, as her new husband joined in the words—to roars of approbation. Only Aveline could hear the harshness of the emphasis as Piers sang about the sluttishness of women and how they represented the power of the Devil to lure pious men everywhere into a life of debauchery.

Finally, the culmination of this long day of celebration could not be delayed any longer: the bride and groom were to be put to bed. As Aveline stood up, Anne ran forward to arrange the folds of her train becomingly, and Lady Margaret rose to conduct the bride to her husband’s chamber and into a bed adorned with fine new sheets given by the king.

Passively, still as carved stone, Aveline let Anne fuss around her, but as Lady Margaret advanced with a chaplet of fresh flowers with which to crown the bride, her iron composure broke for a moment and Anne saw that she was very close to crying. Margaret, sensitive as ever, managed to cover the moment.

“Bend forward, Aveline—you know how very short I am. I’ll never reach up far enough.” It was a delicate little joke—they were almost the same height—but it was a token from the older woman that she understood and paid honor to the troubled girl standing before them all.

It was enough. In dropping her face forward, Aveline took several deep breaths that stopped the tears, and once the flowers were in place, her new mother-in-law took her gently by the hand. The grasp of her fingers was strong, steady—comforting—and with Anne gathering up the train behind, Margaret escorted Piers’s bride toward the great staircase from the hall that led into the upper part of the house.

A trailing crowd of ladies streamed behind them, making much noise, speculating that the bride was about to have a very long night indeed because of her beauty and the virility of her handsome husband.

But Aveline said not a word. The staircase loomed before her like a great stone mountain, the shallow slate treads disappearing upward into darkness despite the profusion of torches flaring in the gloom.

They were followed by the musicians, trying not to stagger as they played and sang their way up the stairs, and immediately behind them came a crowd of boisterous young court and city gallants surrounding Piers. As their blunt comments about the charms of the crowd of women ahead of them on the stairs floated up into the darkness through the smoke of the flaring torches, there was an uneasy undertone to it all. Drunk though they were, many could still sense something out of kilter at the heart of all the noise. Others, afterward, would say it had never felt like a real wedding for all the money spent.

There was a dangerous glitter in the eyes of the groom—Anne saw that when she chanced to glance down. He’d been drinking steadily through the whole day, though no one thought he was drunk. Now he kept his eyes fixed upward on the small party of women surrounding Aveline as they reached the top and turned down the corridor toward his chamber.

In Piers’s chamber John had lit a host of candles with a fat-soaked rush spill from the fire and stood back to admire the room, which he’d decorated with evergreen branches and holly, as the crowd of women entered to put the bride to bed. He’d never really liked Aveline because she could be so haughty, but he wasn’t like the rest of the household servants. They’d been alternately outraged about her good luck in marrying Piers Cuttifer and scornful of her ability to keep him in her bed once the knot was tied. Aveline gave John hope—if her life could change, perhaps his could too. The women shooed him out the door, but not before Margaret made a point of giving him a half angel for all his hard work in preparing the bridegroom and his chamber.

Now the time had come to bed the bride. With much giggling, Margaret and several other ladies helped Aveline out of her scarlet dress and gave her water to rinse her mouth and to wash her hands, face, throat, and feet as she stood shivering in her fine silk shift, though the fire was bright and warm.

“First night nerves” was the general opinion of the bride’s gooseflesh. Aveline said nothing but her eyes were drawn to the bed in the shadows. Unwilling images formed—sinful images—and she knew she had much to atone for now that it had pleased God to allow her to marry the source of her sin. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering.

With much laughter, the women drew her over to the bed, pulling back the curtains as Anne warmed the sheets with a brightly polished copper bedpan, a luxury that had come from Paris with the last consignment of French fabric that Mathew had imported. Then, at last, they settled her under the coverlet and called the groom to view his bride.

There was hullabaloo in the corridor outside the room. The door was thrown open wide and the room filled with the smell of wine and male sweat as on a tide of oaths and with a tremendous rattle of cymbals and drums Piers was jostled toward the bed. He had been dressed in a long gown of fine woolen cloth tied around the waist with a tasseled cord; underneath, it was clear that he was naked.

There was much comment on the size of the bed and how useful that would be in the night to come as the groom was pushed onto the bed beside his wife.

“Not on top, not on top! Underneath!” They meant, get underneath the covers, but the words provoked more drunken laughter, and in the shadows away from the light of the fire and the candles, a number of the girls attending the bride felt groping hands and hot breath on their necks. Margaret signaled to Mathew: time to finish or order would rapidly depart. Mathew agreed, and waving for the musicians to be silent, he strove to raise his voice above the hubbub.

“My friends, we thank you all for the honor of your company on this happy day, but now the time has come for us to leave my son and his new wife as they contemplate the joining of their lives today.”

He drew the curtains on the bed as a definite statement that the wassail was finished and the crowd should leave the chamber—which they did, though some lingered for a moment to address the closed curtains, wishing the new couple joy in one another.

The last to leave was Anne. As she quickly tidied Aveline’s clothes, she looked at the great shrouded bed in the corner and had the urge to say something to Aveline, something comforting, but at the last moment, her courage failed and she left quietly. But as she turned to close the door something moved in the shadows beyond the light of the fire. Was it her imagination or did she glimpse the figure she’d seen this morning in the chapel? For a moment there was a flash of gold glimmering in the darkness, and a hint of cold light catching the edge of a sword blade.

Then the door closed suddenly, as if in a gust of wind—when there was no wind—and Anne was left on the other side with the feeling she was standing right up to her neck in ice-cold water.

Chapter Twelve

Winter had lingered this year but now it was May Day and all the city was awake. Whatever the sky said, the people of London would have their celebration to welcome in the longed-for warmer days.

Everywhere shutters had been thrown open at the tops of crooked houses and the sky anxiously scanned. This year God had been good, however. As they woke, neighbor called out to neighbor,

“Look, the sky is clear,” and it was—even the air felt balmy, the last of the chill gone. The sound of hurrying feet was everywhere as the people, dressed in fine new holiday clothes, thronged the narrow streets on their way out into the fields around London to join the May Day revels.

There were even those who said the fine day was an omen. Today was the anniversary of King Edward’s marriage to Elizabeth Wydeville, so surely it was the Lord’s way of signifying approval of this match—even if Lord Warwick opposed the marriage still. Perhaps the times were finally changing, perhaps the future really would be as golden as this dawn. England had a beautiful, newly crowned queen who was pregnant and very close to term, a handsome young warrior-king bent on restoring order to his shattered kingdom. So yes, there was cause for celebration. The babies born from these May Day revels would enter a much safer world, one ruled by youth and beauty.

That was what the people thought, but Mathew Cuttifer was less optimistic. In the months since Aveline and Piers’s wedding much had changed at court and none of it seemed good to him. The continuing trouble between the king and Warwick was foremost in his mind today as he heard early Mass surrounded by his household. Shortly, he would allow his people to join the throngs heading out toward the green fields of Chelsea, though not before Father Bartolph preached a determined sermon about the heedless, reckless lure of the flesh. But after the privations of Lent, which had followed a long, cold winter, the people of Blessing House were in no mood to listen, and sat in resentful silence as the priest thundered that Satan crouched among the wine butts, in the pagan bonfires, and, most of all, roosted at the top of the foul Maypole with all its filthy rituals. Earnestly, Father Bartolph entreated the women in the house, especially the girls, to remain with him today, on their knees, and pray for help from Mary Mother of God, their master’s patron, for all the wanton souls who would sell themselves into damnation through the snares of lust and gluttony.

The priest did his best, but even Mathew became conscious after a time that perhaps, today, enough was enough. Besides, very soon another generation would begin—he’d been wakened during the night by Margaret and told that Aveline had begun her labor—and he would need all the prayers of his priest for the new child and its parents.

In his heart, Mathew could acknowledge that the birth of this child meant a great deal to him.

Somehow, with Mary’s help, the baby might prove the bridge he so desperately wanted between himself and Piers. That is what he prayed for because, God knew, the last five months had been the most emotionally tumultuous of his entire life. At times he had despaired; while he believed in the guidance he had received from the Lord, he had forced Piers into this marriage and it seemed that only evil had been the result. But that could not be right, surely? God had spoken to him, he had obeyed, and had expected that obedience, in return, from his own son.