The Rogue's Princess (19 page)

‘Broad-minded?’ What did he mean by that?

‘Aye.’ He stopped under an oak tree that grew in the middle of the hedge, a screen to the farm buildings beyond. In stature, he made a thin grey post against the riot of greenery behind him. ‘The brothers here in London are apt to be too narrow. My friends on the continent have the right of it: our salvation or damnation is in God’s hands; no works we can do will earn it. Therefore, we need not trouble ourselves overly about the smaller matters of the world, how many sins we incur and the like.’

Mercy knew from her father that some believers argued thus, inspired by the teaching of the Calvinists, but never had she heard that they concluded that sins did not matter. She wasn’t sure what Righteous meant, in truth.

‘I don’t understand. Surely, sins always count?’

He dropped his hat on the ground and took her hands. He smiled at her. ‘I think you do comprehend in your heart of hearts. You have already garnered some experience in your few years of the world. I want such a woman who will understand the weaknesses of the flesh, not a porcelain saint like your sister.’ He edged her back until she was against the tree trunk, looking at her with an unsettling expression – intent, like a mastiff spying weaker prey. She stumbled, foot slipping on the uneven ground at the roots. ‘And if you still do not understand, perhaps I can show you, for there is no need to wait with you, is there?’ His mouth descended on hers, pressing her lips in a grinding, slobbery kiss.

Mercy was too shocked to react. When she did not soften for
him, he moved his hand to her throat, pressing the corners of her jaw. ‘Open your mouth for me. You know you want this.’

She absolutely did not want his kiss. Mercy struggled, but his fingers dug into her cheeks forcing her jaws apart. He then filled her mouth with his thrusting tongue, stopping her protests.

Stars, now she knew what Grandmother had meant about unpleasant kisses. She felt as though she were going to suffocate.

While she battled to push Righteous away from her mouth, his other hand was busy raising her skirts to touch her thigh. When she realized, she squawked in fury, trying to stamp on his foot or knee him as Rose had done that man at the Theatre, but he was pressed too firmly against her to allow her enough movement to succeed.

‘No, sir. Let go of me!’ Mercy protested when he raised his head from the assault on her mouth. ‘I’ll tell your father!’

‘Peace, sweet. Your family approves the match. There’s nothing to stop me tasting the fruit before our vows.’

He seemed determined to press this encounter further – far further than she knew possible. His hand was now thrusting down the neck of her bodice, reaching for the bare skin of her breast. She had to take desperate measures. Giving up on the unequal struggle of pushing him away, she freed her arms and clapped her hands to both his ears with force, then scratched at his eyes.

‘God’s sake, girl, what’s got into you?’ Righteous cried, stumbling back from her.

‘Nothing, but the Devil must have got into you, sir!’ She picked up a fallen branch to swing at him, but he was shaking his head, ears ringing, and no longer appeared likely to press
his suit. ‘I fear, Master Field, I am not the broad-minded woman you seek if that is what you think the word means. Touch me not again.’ She turned to leave. ‘And take not the Lord’s name in vain. Did not your father teach you anything?’

Field snatched up his hat and brandished it at her. ‘Mercy Hart, you should go down on your knees to thank God that I am willing to marry you. No one else in our congregation would consider connecting themselves with you after your dalliance with the player!’

‘Nay, sir.’ Mercy swung the branch threateningly at him. ‘I go down on my knees to thank God I do not have to wed a hypocrite like you. Give me a sinful player any day over a painted sepulchre like you.’

She stormed away, her fury carrying her back through the dangerous alleys of Southwark. Even a cutpurse would think twice about approaching an enraged maiden bearing a stout oak staff.

Not being able to stomach going home, Mercy ran to take refuge with her aunt. Pushing her way past the astonished gallants waiting in the fencing yard, she burst into her aunt’s home without even knocking. She interrupted Rose and Silas at their dinner.

‘Mercy!’ her aunt cried. ‘Whatever is the matter?’

Mercy took one look at the branch in her hand then threw it down. ‘Oh, Aunt, I’m in a fearful tangle.’ And she burst into tears.

It took Rose a good half-hour to calm her niece. Silas had surmised something out of the ordinary had happened to the lass from the disturbed state of her clothes and hair.

‘Leave me with her.’ Rose motioned him to the door.

‘When you find out who it is,’ Silas growled, ‘I’ll go …’

‘Yes, you’ll go skewer him for her.’ Rose’s eyes shone with exasperated love for her rough soldier. ‘Let us have a quiet word first. Skewering may not be the best course of action.’

Mercy poured out her story between fits of sobbing – the argument with Kit, the fact that he hadn’t come as usual to his Sunday trysting spot, the suitor her father had lined up for her and the disastrous walk in the fields.

‘What did he do, Mercy?’ her aunt asked with genuine concern. ‘He didn’t …’ She feared to put the thought into words.

‘He kissed me,’ wailed Mercy, ‘and it was horrid. Not like Kit. He tried to touch me under my skirts and my … my breast, but then I pounded his ears like you used to do to us when Edwin and I argued – but harder – and then I scratched him.’

‘I see.’ Rose began to realize her worst fears had not come to pass.

‘When he let me go, I threatened him with that.’ She gestured to the oak branch. ‘He backed off. I just wish now I’d got in a couple of good blows before I left him.’

Rose was only grateful that the scoundrel had not been a bigger, more violent man. She wouldn’t fancy her little niece’s chances against one such as that. ‘Oh, love, we need to get you safely married to our Kit, don’t we? We can’t have any Puritan boy who thinks you’re a woman of easy virtue trying his luck with you.’

‘But Kit doesn’t want me any more.’ Mercy mangled the handkerchief in her lap.

‘I don’t think that is true for one moment. Lovers quarrel all the time. It is part of the growing together each pair must go through.’ She thought how she and Silas had had several loud disagreements since she had come to live with him, neither swift to back down and beg the other’s pardon. It all added spice to the mix. Her sweet niece was still at the stage when she believed every up and down was life or death to a relationship.

Mercy was not ready to hear such comforting words, her mind still predicting dire consequences from their tiff. ‘But a quarrel might also drive them apart, might it not?’

That was undeniably true. Rose did not know Kit well enough to guess if he had the constancy to stay when the going got difficult. Still, she had liked what she had seen of the young man thus far.

‘You mustn’t give up so quickly, Mercy. Wait until you see Kit again. It sounds to me as if you owe him an apology.’

Mercy smudged her tears across her cheeks with her wrist. ‘But I really thought it wasn’t like that, you know, between men and women. But I was wrong: even God-fearing folk grope each other – in broad daylight. And he’s the minister’s son!’

Rose wisely hid her smile. Ignorance through innocence was not to be mocked. All have to come to the realization one day that marital relations involved more than the chaste kisses of the poets. This was Mercy’s moment.

‘It sounds to me that you are in very good hands with your Kit. He will show you what you need to know at the right moment and it won’t disgust you as today’s experience has done. But I think it is past time I had a word with your father.
We must keep you out of the clutches of that Field boy or I really will have to send Master Porter to skewer him.’

Mercy shrank back, skin flushed red with embarrassment. ‘Must you, Aunt?’

‘Aye, I must. Your father is blinkered as to the true qualities of the boy and it is only fair to you that he is put right on a matter or two.’

Mercy shook her head. ‘I’m not sure I want to be there. He’s convinced that Righteous can do no wrong.’

‘Then we’ll have to tell him, won’t we?’

‘What?’

Rose grinned and shaped her niece’s face gently in her hands so she would pay attention to every word. ‘That righteous is as righteous doth, not as named.’

Mercy realized that she had made a tactical error going to her aunt’s first when she discovered Righteous Field already in possession of her father’s parlour. Pushing open the door quietly, her aunt at her shoulder, she was just in time to hear the tail end of his version of events.

‘And then she marched off, leaving me kneeling in the mud, most respectfully I might add, shouting at me that she would wed a player, not a minister’s son.’ Righteous clutched his hat to his breast. ‘I fear, sir, your child is possessed by a demon. You must ask my father to drive it out before it brings greater grief upon you.’

Aunt Rose shut the door with a bang, startling Field into tripping backwards. Mercy’s father, Edwin and Faith stared at her as if she had just fallen from the moon among them.

‘Demon, my stars! It was no demon that possessed my
darling girl but a presumptuous boy who would’ve forced himself on her if she had not fought back!’ Rose snatched a twig broom from its usual place by the door and took a swipe at Field.

‘Aunt, please!’ Mercy was not sorry to see Righteous punished, but it was not helping her case if her family thought them both possessed.

‘What is this!’ spluttered Field, holding his hands in front of him to fend off the birch twigs aimed at his groin. ‘Stop her someone!’

‘Keep back!’ warned Rose, showing she had thorns for all her pretty name. She got in another good blow below the belt. ‘This snake-in-the-grass needs to be taught a lesson!’

The paralysis that had struck the Harts at this unexpected development lifted. Faith rushed to Mercy’s side.

‘My dear, is this true? Did he attack you?’

Mercy suddenly realized that whatever Righteous believed he could achieve by poisoning the ground before her seed of truth could be scattered would not work. Her family knew and loved her; they would stand by her.

‘Aye, he tried to … to anticipate the marriage bed.’ Mercy couldn’t bring herself to be more specific before her father and brother.

‘
What?
’ roared John Hart. The kindly merchant seemed to swell as he rounded on the much-harassed Field. ‘You dare touch my daughter in that lascivious fashion?’ His anger was such that even Rose eased her onslaught to look at him in surprise.

Field gave Mercy a look of contempt. ‘I only went where others have doubtless gone before.’

At that insult, Faith pushed past Rose and delivered a sound slap to the man’s face. ‘You fiend! How dare you insult my innocent sister without cause!’

‘Villain, take that back!’ Edwin stepped forward to add his own ha’penny worth to the dispute, but John Hart swept him aside.

‘Leave this to me, Edwin. It is for me to punish your sister’s attacker.’ Mercy’s father stood in front of the smirking suitor – Righteous was foolishly convinced that his connection to his father would protect him from an irate member of the congregation. ‘Master Field, I trusted you with my daughter, thinking you meant only to honour her, but you have proved yourself a rotten sinner, not worthy to touch the hem of her cloak, let alone her person. We are going to your father, but first you will feel what it is like to be at the mercy of someone who is bigger and stronger than you.’

And then her peace-loving father drew back his fist and laid Field out on the rush mat with a punch to the jaw.

Rose applauded and hopped on the spot with delight. ‘Oh John, that’s splendid! But what happened to turning the other cheek?’

‘Humph!’ He hauled the dazed Field up by the front of the jacket. ‘I’d be happy to hit the other one too if he begs me. Come along, master, I think it’s time you and your father had a little talk about your future.’

Waiting for the performance to begin in the tiring room, Kit pondered what means he could find to deliver his crawling plea to be back in Mercy’s favour. If it meant tying his hands behind his back whenever they were together, he would do
it. He was almost dressed for his role in today’s play, all ready bar his doublet, so could afford the time to sit on an empty trunk, surrounded by a curtain of cloaks, swords and armour, and ponder his situation. Unless the Belknaps arranged another amusement for them both, he had no common ground on which to meet her. He supposed he could linger outside her house in the hopes that she would come out, but he had his rehearsals to attend and performances to give. He valued his regular wage too much to risk his employment on what might prove a fruitless watch. The best he could hope was that her aunt would pass her a message, but that would not do justice to the words he wanted to say.

James Burbage patrolled the room, checking all the actors had come in good time. He slapped his son, Richard, on the back, making him stagger as he tried to put on his hose, causing much hilarity at that end of the room. Kit let his gaze drift, noticing how the dust spun in the shaft of sunlight coming through a high window. Beams fell on a spot where one trunk sat neglected and unopened.

‘Turner, have you seen Tom Saxon?’ Burbage kicked the chest.

‘Nay, not since yesterday.’

Burbage whistled for the Theatre’s messenger boy. ‘Here, lad, go knock on Master Saxon’s door and see what’s keeping him.’ He checked the prompt’s copy of the day’s play,
The Two Widows of Eastchepe.
‘Hi, you, Shakespeare. Look, man, if Saxon doesn’t show, you’ll have to take the part of the merchant. Can you do it?’

The Stratford man shrugged. ‘Aye and stand on my head, if it please you.’ He was famous in the cast for having a
prodigious memory, knowing everyone’s parts as well as his own. Sadly, his acting skills were not as strong, and he had yet to be given a big role.

‘Nay, doing the merchant on your own two feet will be enough.’ Burbage moved on, grumbling about sottish lads not turning up to do their duty.