The King's Mistress (25 page)

“No,” Jane sobbed, finally able to speak. “It’s more than that. Oh, John, we were lovers. I am with child by the king.”

John pushed her from him with such force that she almost fell off the bed. He stared at her, disbelief warring with outrage and anger as he saw the truth of it in her face. He stood and paced, running his hands through his hair in agitation, then turned on her.

“How could you have behaved so?”

“I love him!” she cried, her grief outshone for the moment by building rage.

“Love!” he snorted. “Love? You were a maid and you gave yourself to a man who could never wed you even if he would. He was the king, whether covered in mud or no. Did you not think of the shame you would bring to the family?”

“The family? Is that all that concerns you, brother? Shame to the family? At your behest I put myself in mortal peril to help him. And now England is not safe for me, and what lies ahead of me, I know not. My life is a shambles, and you have no sympathy for me, but worry about your honour.”

She spat the word at him.

“No sympathy for you?”

John strode towards her, eyes blazing. She had never seen him so angry.

“I left my wife and family, not knowing when I may see them again, because I could not abandon you to make your way alone to safety. Have you thought of that? And what are we to do now?”

“Go on to France, what else?”

“You say it as though it were no small matter! God knows how long it might have taken us to reach France, did all things smile on us. But your—condition—changes all. What if you are taken badly? What if we do not reach France before you are brought to bed? Or if we do? How shall we look, creeping to the queen and the French court, you big with the king’s bastard?”

Jane slapped John across the face.

“Then leave me!” she shrieked. “Leave me to my grief and myself! I had rather make my way alone than with you if you think so little of me!”

She shoved him so that he stumbled back against a chair, and he made as if to strike her, but mastered himself, and leaned on the chair, breathing hard, his hands clutching it as if it were the only solid thing in a heaving ocean. Jane slumped onto the bed, hugging her knees to her chest as she sobbed.

At length John sat, breathed more calmly, and spoke.

“There is nothing for it but to go on and hope that all will be well.”

All well?
Jane thought. Nothing would ever be well again, for Charles was dead, England was not safe for her, and she must go on to a strange land where she knew no one.

“I’m sorry,” John said after some time. “For all of it. For putting you in the king’s company and in danger, for what has come to pass, and for my harsh words.”

Jane didn’t answer, and he went and sat beside her.

“You must eat. I’ll go down and have food brought up.”

Jane bathed her face in cool water while John went downstairs. They ate together by the fire, and the hot food soothed her, but her tears kept surging to the surface.

“Perhaps he is not dead,” John said, and she nodded numbly, holding to that shred of hope.

Jane’s dreams that night were terrifying, full of cold ocean water crashing onto her in waves. She woke herself with crying out, and John took her in his arms and held her as she wept.

In the morning Jane felt as though she had been beaten with sticks, so weary was her body and so defeated her spirit. She was desperately glad they had decided not to leave until the next day, and passed the day drifting in and out of sleep, her dreams torn with grief and fear.

“Can you travel tomorrow, do you think?” John asked over their supper.

“I’ll have to. The sooner we set off, the sooner we shall be in France.”

T
HE ROAD TOWARDS
N
ORWICH AND
Y
ARMOUTH TOOK
J
ANE AND
John east through swampy fens, the salt smell of the sea heavy in their nostrils. Buzzards and crows called shrill in the biting air. After the first hour of walking they passed no one. The land lay before them, vast and empty.

At late morning they passed a windmill, its great arms creaking as they turned.

“Then someone else must be alive out here,” Jane said.

In the afternoon they came to a crossroads. A village lay a little off the main road to the north, and to the south the little road ran straight through the rustling brown grasses and met the horizon.

“Another Roman road,” John said, and Jane almost thought she could hear the tramp of feet on the damp earth as ghostly legions moved in the mists.

“It’s All Hallows’ Eve,” she remembered, and wondered if it was true, as Nurse had told her when she was a child, that on this day the barrier between this world and the next was thin, and spirits walked.

The road turned to the southeast and climbed into rolling hills. Walking on the incline made Jane’s thighs and buttocks ache. Dark clouds were gathering ahead, and she glanced at the sun dropping lower in the sky behind them.

“We’ll not walk too much further tonight,” John said. “When we find anyplace likely, we’ll stop. But it may be we sleep rough.”

Jane nodded. This would be the hardest part of the way, the long march towards the sea through barren silent lands.

The road sloped down out of the hills, and onto a broad flat plain with sheep downs stretching away on either side, dotted with high shrubs and outcroppings of rock. Another hill rose ahead, and Jane’s spirits began to flag. She stopped, and John waited while she pulled the leather bottle from her bag and drank, and then handed it to him. They walked on. A brown hare bounded across the road in front of them, and then another. Jane looked out into the scrub and saw movement here and there.

“Well, look at that,” John exclaimed. “When we reach those rocks at the bend of the road ahead, you sit and rest for a bit and I’ll see if I can shoot one of the little creatures, and perhaps we might have a hot dinner.”

When they reached the stones, Jane sank onto a boulder and rested her back against a high wall of rock behind her. Long-eared hares scampered everywhere. John laid down his pack and staff and checked his pistol. He had bought powder and shot in King’s Lynn, and the pistol was primed and ready. He walked a few yards off the road and squatted near some shrubbery. He was absolutely motionless, and Jane watched in fascination as a hare loped towards him and then stopped, its nose and whiskers twitching as it sniffed the air. John’s pistol was pointed at the furry head, and she watched as he squeezed the trigger slowly. There was a roar and the hare flew backward in a little shower of blood. John lifted it by the feet and held it up for Jane to see.

“Well done!” she cried.

The thought of meat for dinner and the warmth of a fire energised her, and she hopped off the rock as John made his way towards her. Suddenly someone was beside her. The man had stepped from where he had been hidden behind the tall outcropping of rock, and his pistol was pointed at Jane’s head. He was a big man, perhaps thirty years old, wearing a red soldier’s coat, but it was ragged and filthy, and his face was covered with a golden haze of stubble. A deserter, he must be.

Jane stared at the man, too surprised to react, and felt rather than saw John stop where he stood, some twenty paces away.

“I thank you,” the man said to John. “You’ve saved me the trouble both of taking your pistol from you and shooting dinner. Now throw down the weapon and the cony just there, along with your purse.”

John hesitated and the man grasped Jane roughly by the arm.

“Come, friend. Surely your boy here means more to you than whatever coin you’re carrying.”

John silently tossed the hare and his pistol onto the ground, and reached to open his coat.

“Slowly,” the big man barked. “So I can see you don’t have a second pistol at your belt.”

Jane tried not to start. John didn’t have a second pistol at his belt, she knew, because it hung at her own waist, concealed by her coat, which fell unbuttoned around her. Could she get to it?

John slowly pushed his coat aside, showing that he had thrown away his only weapon. He pulled the purse of coins from his coat pocket and held it out for the man to see. There were still some gold coins sewn into the lining of his coat, and Jane prayed that the man would be content with the purse and not think to look elsewhere. John dropped the purse onto the ground, and the man glanced at Jane.

“Now you, boy. Does your daddy let you carry any coin or weapon? Open your coat so I can see.”

He straightened his right arm to point the pistol towards John as he turned Jane to face him. She saw a flash of surprise in his eyes, followed by a leering grin.

“Well, I’ll be poxed. You’re no boy.”

He licked his lips and reached his free hand towards Jane’s breast. Then everything seemed to happen at once. John shouted, the man turned his head sharply away from Jane, and in that instant she yanked the pistol from her belt, bringing it to full cock, thrust it up into the hollow below his chin, and fired.

The man’s body flew backward as Jane staggered back from the recoil of the weapon. John ran towards her, but the deserter lay in a pool of brains and blood. John clutched Jane to him, nearly sobbing.

“Oh, Jane, Christ, oh, Christ.”

She held on to him, shaking, and he helped her to the rock, where they sat clasped together, John rocking Jane in his arms, murmuring soothing words into her hair. After a time she lifted her head to look at the man she had killed, the place where his face had been staring up into the darkening sky.

“What will we do with him?” she whispered.

John glanced around.

“I’ll drag him into the bracken there and cover him over. The birds and the beasts will take care of the rest.”

He bent and searched through the dead man’s pockets, coming up with a purse and a bag of shot and powder, which he laid on the rock next to Jane. He threw off his coat, grasped the corpse’s booted ankles, and hauled it bumping over the rough ground into the gorse. Jane’s stomach was heaving, but she forced herself to stand and to kick loose dirt onto the trail of blood to cover it.

When John came back, dusk was falling.

“Come,” he said, putting on his coat. “It will be dark soon.”

Jane needed no urging. She wanted to put as much distance as possible between herself and the dead man.

“There’s something ahead.” John pointed when they had gone about a mile.

As they drew near Jane saw that it was an ancient crofter’s hut, low walls built of stacked slabs of peat topped with a thatched roof. The little door hung loose on its leather hinges, but the hut was dry inside and would provide shelter from the elements and whatever night-walking things might be about.

“You rest,” John said, and Jane did so gratefully, comforted by the sound of him moving around outside as he built a fire. She drowsed and woke to the smell of roasted meat. John came in with the cooked hare. She was hungry but her gorge rose at the sight of the little legs stretched out in their darkened skin.

“I can’t,” she said, lying down again and turning her face away. “I’m sorry.”

“You must eat something,” John insisted gently. “At least some bread.” The bread they had bought that morning in King’s Lynn was still fresh and good, and Jane found that the bland softness was just what she wanted.

The night was full of noises—the harsh call of a barn owl, the shriek of some small animal taken by a predator, the wind rattling through the bushes—and as the fire before the hut died out, Jane heard little scrabbling feet in the dark. The wind sighed outside and she shivered in her blanket, seeing the stubbled face of the deserter and then his inert form lying so still on the dirt, and she wondered if his spirit had followed them and hovered nearby.

I
N THE MORNING THEY SET OUT EARLY
. T
HE ROAD RAN THROUGH
open heath, but they passed two or three windmills, and here and there little tracks crossed the main road, leading to tiny clusters of cottages in the distance. In the late afternoon they came to a small hamlet, and learning that there were no houses on the road for several miles ahead, decided to stop for the night, bedding down before the hearth in the village’s sole tavern.

The next night the road offered no shelter but a blacksmith’s shop. A village lay a mile or so to the north, the smith told them, but dark was coming on fast and it would be easy to lose their way, so they wrapped themselves in their blankets and cloaks and slept warmed by the residual heat of the forge.

The next day a cavalry patrol passed them on the road, riding fast and apparently not finding them worthy of suspicion. Still, worried that the soldiers might be searching for a woman of Jane’s description, they slept in an old barn some way off from a great house, with only hard ship’s biscuit and cheese and tough strips of dried venison to eat. Jane was exhausted and wanted with her soul to spend a day lying down instead of walking, but she was afraid and insisted they move on. Besides, the day was bitterly cold, and walking kept her warm.

The road now took them through vast and lonely country. The dull brown of the heath stretched endlessly towards the horizon. Here and there a rock outcropping broke the flatness, cutting upward into the grey sky. The land seemed strangely hushed, listening, waiting. Their footsteps on the road sounded harsh, intrusive. Neither Jane nor John had spoken in some time and Jane felt almost that she would not be able to speak if she tried, as if her voice had somehow been taken from her in the oppressive silence that surrounded them. She looked off to the right, to the left. Nothing but empty land, sparsely covered in heather. They might have been the only people left on the earth, as far as she could tell.

And then suddenly she saw that a few feet ahead of them, just off the road, was a human shape, and she gasped and stopped in her tracks. It was an old woman, bent and knotted, swathed in garments so ragged and of such indeterminate colour, and standing so still, that she might have been the twisted trunk of a dead tree. The woman had not been there the moment before, Jane was sure of that. John had come to a halt beside her.