The King's Mistress (48 page)

John helped her to alight, and awkwardly they all began to talk at once, and then all stopped at once to let one another speak, and again began to speak at once. Jane hugged her mother to her, careful at her fragility. Had she always been so small?

“You’ll be tired,” her mother said. “Your room is waiting for you, just as it was.”

The memory of her room as it had been on that morning so long ago came sharp into Jane’s mind, and suddenly she wondered why she had not come home so soon as she had landed in England, or indeed as soon as she had known that Charles would take his throne and she no longer had to fear for her life. What magic had she thought that Charles or London held, that they had kept her from the home and the people she loved so dearly?

“The others?” Jane asked.

“We’ll have everyone to supper tomorrow,” John said. “When you’ve had a chance to rest. Everyone is fair aching to see you again, Jane.”

The servants had taken Jane’s baggage upstairs, and she opened the door of her room to the scent of the fir boughs burning in the fireplace. And to the sound of a creaking call she knew so well and had not heard for so long.

“Jack!”

The cat leaped off the window seat and came stumping across the floor towards her, his tail held high. She could hear his purring from halfway across the room. She knelt and he came to her, and she kissed his head, stroked the soft white fur of his throat, inhaled the dusty and alive scent as he butted against her cheek.

“Oh, Jack. I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

J
ANE FELT LIKE A STRANGER AT THE FAMILY SUPPER THE FOLLOWING
evening. John’s children were all grown. Mary, Anne, and Elizabeth had married and were no longer at home. Thomas, whom she had last seen as a slight boy of eleven, was a tall and strapping young man who had just reached his majority. Grace, Lettice, and her namesake Jane were past twenty-one, though as yet unmarried. Even the youngest girls, Dorothy and Frances, were young ladies. The gathering was so small that there was no need to use the banqueting house; the entire family fit comfortably in the dining room.

Nurse, the steward, and a few other old retainers were still at Bentley, but so many of the others that Jane had known were gone, and the household now had only nine servants in all.

“We’ve done far less mining and farming than in the old days,” young Thomas said. “There was no point in the labour as the more we earned, the more we were levied.”

“But that will all change now,” William said. “Now that the king is back, and we have nothing more to fear.”

Jane noted with shock that even he, only a couple of years older than she, had a dusting of grey hair at his temples.

“Many things will change, and for the better, too,” John said. “So many years of hardships are behind us now.”

J
ANE STOOPED TO LAY THE APPLE BLOSSOMS ON HER FATHER’S GRAVE
. It still looked so new, with the shoots of grass covering the mound of earth a fresher and brighter green than that of the surrounding sod. She sat, not caring for the dirt on her skirts, and with a finger traced the letters of his name, the dates of his birth and death, the edges of the carving in the stone still sharp and clean.

“I’m sorry, Father,” she whispered. “I wish I had been here for you.”

The whole orchard at Bentley was a cloud of pink and white blossoms, their sweet scent permeating the air.
Nine springs I missed,
Jane thought.
Nine times the winter-dark branches shooting forth their tiny buds, nine times those buds exploded in riotous blossom, nine times those blossoms showered the earth as the green leaves uncurled, nine times the nubs grew steadily into the heavy fruit. Did you walk here among the trees and think of me and wish me with you? Did you know that every day I thought of you and prayed for you, dear Father?

She cried, as she had not been able to release herself to cry for her father’s death until now, laying her head upon the sod, her fingers clutching at the cold ground. And when she had finally done, wiping her grimy cheeks with dirt-streaked hands, the question sprang into her mind, as it had done so many times before. Was it worth it?

N
OT LONG AFTER
J
ANE’S RETURN, SHE RECEIVED A LETTER FROM
S
IR
Clement Fisher, welcoming her home and asking if he could visit. Jane thought back to the last time she had seen him, at that birthday supper so long ago, just before Charles had arrived to change her life forever. She was an entirely different person now than she had been then, she thought. Could she hope to explain to Sir Clement what her life had been? Would she need to? After some thought she wrote back that she would be pleased to see him, and a week later she watched from her bedroom window as he came riding up the drive. He was still very handsome, she thought, little changed outwardly from the man she had known almost ten years earlier. She glanced in the mirror. She knew how much she had changed. Would he still find her to his liking?

“Jane.”

Clement’s voice was warm and his eyes told her that he still saw beauty in her face and form. She was surprised at how the sight of him stirred her heart. He had aged well, and seemed somehow more solid than she remembered. As he took her hand and kissed her, she felt at home and very safe.

“Jane,” he said. “And now you are not just my Jane but the heroine of the country, the friend of the king and the darling of the courts of London, Paris, and the United Provinces.”

“Hardly that,” Jane laughed. “Were I that darling, they would not have let me leave. There is refreshment in the small parlour. Shall we sit there?”

As they settled before the fire, Jane recalled the evening long ago when Clement had asked her to be his wife. She poured hot chocolate for him, and sipped her own, not sure what to say.

“Will you tell me of your time abroad?” he asked.

“There’s not much to say. Or rather, there’s so much that I scarce know where to begin. Ten years …”

“Yes. Oh, Jane, I thought of you so often in those years. I carried you ever in my heart and longed for your return.”

Jane was surprised at his words, and moved that he should be so candid.

“I’m gratified at such esteem,” she said. “But I am not who I was. I fear I must disappoint you, when you find that the woman you have held in your mind’s eye is gone.”

He looked sad, and Jane spoke again.

“I do not mean in any way to reject your friendship.”

“Is it friendship only that you think I offer you?”

There was love in his eyes, and with a flood of longing Jane realised how she had yearned for love and how little she had received in recent years.

“What I mean,” she said, “is that I welcome your company more than I knew. And yet I am afraid, I find.”

“Afraid? Of me?”

“No, not afraid of you. But of being known by you, perhaps.”

She thought about the lost child, and the pain, and what Marjorie had told her, that she might never hold a child in her womb again. Could she ever tell Clement that? What if he wanted a child, what if that was his chief reason for seeking a wife? They sat in silence for some moments before he spoke.

“I would not have you share with me more of yourself than is comfortable for you. Let us begin anew. We’ll get to know each other as the people we are now, rather than who we were before. I’ll take nothing for granted, and hope that with time you may come to trust that you are safe with me.”

Jane smiled, grateful.

“Thank you. Once more you offer me more patience than any woman has a right to expect.”

“But it is not any woman to whom I give it. It is you. Oh, Jane, you cannot know what it means to me to have you here beside me.”

C
HARLES’S CORONATION WOULD TAKE PLACE ON THE TWENTY-THIRD
of April. St George’s Day, the feast day of the patron saint of England. Well chosen, Jane thought. There was no day in the calendar that could be more heavily freighted with Englishness, with tradition, with the monarchy stretching back so many centuries. She had a pang of longing that she would not be in London for the event. She could imagine the streets thronged with the rejoicing populace, the church bells pealing, the king’s stately procession to Westminster Abbey, and the ranks of the nobility there to witness the restoration of the monarchy. She thought of Charles bowing his head to receive the crown and smiled to wonder who would place it on his head, and whether whoever it was would have to stand a-tiptoe to reach. A-tiptoe. The phrase jolted words long forgotten into her mind.

… will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

It was the speech of King Henry V to his outnumbered troops before the Battle of Agincourt.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,

This day shall gentle his condition,

And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accursed they were not here …

The thought shot through Jane like a bolt of lightning. As those men with Henry upon the field in France, she had been there, side by side in battle with the king. Her king. Her Charles. As Charles had said atop that windswept hill in Dorset, if Shakespeare were yet living, he might have written of it, her place no less in glory than those soldiers of old.

The dogs set up a furious barking and Jane went to the window to see what had them so stirred up. A coach was coming up the drive towards the house. A coach was an unusual thing in the country, and certainly a coach such as this, with an ebony-black finish so glossy that the rays of the sun striking it shone as though on a mirror. The old groom Maycumber was hastening as fast as his stiff legs would allow him from the back of the house to meet the strange equipage, and as it turned Jane saw with a shock that the door was painted with the royal coat of arms. Her heart skipped. But as the coach clattered to a halt, a liveried footman emerged, alone. It was not, as she had so wildly hoped for a moment, Charles, come to see her.

T
HE ENTIRE LANE HOUSEHOLD STARED IN AMAZEMENT AT WHAT
the coach had brought, now spread before them on the long dining table. A pocket watch, worked intricately in gold. A great clock. A gold snuffbox with a tiny portrait of the king decorating its lid. A gold poncet box engraved with the Canton of England and the Lane arms. And what Jane could scarcely look away from, a life-size portrait of Charles, in a heavily carved gilded frame, in full regalia as he must have been for his coronation—a robe of purple velvet trimmed in ermine, the heavy golden orb in one hand and splendid sceptre in the other, and on his head, a heavy crown of gold, adorned with jewels of monstrous size. The crown that she had helped to put on his head.

Along with the gifts had come a letter from Charles. The king was pleased to provide for each of John’s daughters a marriage portion of a thousand pounds, and John would receive a yearly pension of five hundred pounds. And a title.

John looked stunned when he read out the letter, to the gasps and squeals of excitement of his wife, daughters, and mother. But he glanced at Jane, and then carefully folded the letter and put it away in the inside pocket of his coat, his expression unreadable. And to the cries asking when he should assume his title, and if they could all go to London when he should do so, he shook his head, and said only, “We’ll see.”

There was more—a long parchment, heavily weighted with seals and ribbons. John opened it, and then passed it to Jane.

“You read it. It’s really for you.”

She glanced down at the ornate letters on the creamy vellum, and read aloud.

“‘To all and singular to whom these presents shall come, we the king’s heralds and pursuivants of arms send greeting. We calling to mind the great and signal service performed to us by John Lane of Bentley in County Stafford concerning the preservation of our royal person after the Battle of Worcester, at which time condemning and threatenings published by the murderers of our royal father against any whosoever should conceal or assist us, and disdaining the rewards proposed to such as should be instrumental in the discovery and destruction of our person, and he not valuing any hazard his family might run, he with duty of an unspotted allegiance did by his great prudence and fidelity so conduct us as that we were able at length to retire to places of safety beyond the seas, have therefore of our own proper motion and free will given and granted to John Lane and his lawful descendants this honourable remuneration, as a notable mark or badge of his constant fidelity, that henceforth they shall bear an augmentation to their paternal arms, three lions passant guardant or, in canton gules.’”

There was a moment of silence.

“Dear God,” Jane said. “It’s the royal lions of England. The king has added the royal lions to your coat of arms.”

T
HE ROYAL FOOTMAN HAD ALSO BROUGHT A SMALL PACKAGE WHICH
he put into Jane’s own hands, telling her that the king had charged him to do so. She saved this to open privately, and went up to her room and closed the door as soon as she could leave the rest of the family without causing comment.

Inside the package was the watch wrapped in the silk handkerchief, which Jane had last seen when she threw it at Charles. There was a letter, too.

“My dear Jane: Of all it is now within my power to give you and your family in thanks for your help to me, this, my father’s watch, is the most precious in my eyes. I beg that you will accept it once more with my most humble apologies, in remembrance of our time together. As you will see if you examine it, the handkerchief preserved the crystal of the watch in its whole and perfect state, and I take leave to hope that what is between us, which has been similarly buffeted and tossed, will likewise survive. Your most affectionate friend, Charles R.”

Jane laughed despite herself as she examined the watch, and shook her head.
God damn you, Charles,
she thought.
You will never let me hate you, however I might try.