The weight of her small body against his legs had seemed somehow comforting, the thin rigidity of her bones strangely pleasant. Now she had climbed free, he felt suddenly cold. “I’m clearly a more fragile creature than you supposed,” he said. “I had not expected to be so incapacitated myself.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “About everything. And thank you. I’ll go now.”
“But for pity’s sake,” he said quietly, “don’t get caught. If you’re found leaving with a purseful of silver and at this time of night, there’ll be only two possible explanations and neither of them at all respectable. And once I’m found here still awake, I can say what I like about it and no one will believe a word I say. So hurry off, and I’ll let you know when I’ve arranged your employment. But I doubt I’ll see you again child, for I’ve no normal contact with the ladies’ personal female staff. I’ll try and check on you from time to time if I can, and I’ll set a search for your brother as I promised. Goodbye Alysson, and look after yourself.”
She smiled, and leaning over abruptly, kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then she quickly left the hall. He did not hear the doors close behind her.
Chapter Nine
“We have no choice in the matter,” said his lordship. “You will therefore comply with a good grace, Ludovic, and observe some rare filial obedience.”
“As the youngest son, I’ve no place being at court, sir,” objected Ludovic with no noticeable shift towards filial obedience. “Take Brice. Take Gerald.”
“You are not about to suggest I take Humphrey, I trust? No, I am relieved.” The earl studied the reflections in the large ruby set into his thumb ring, and gave it a quick polish. “And it may have escaped your notice, Ludovic, since you are so clearly immersed in your, let us say – clandestine – affairs – but neither of your other brothers is presently at home. Nor, since they show about as much proper respect as you do, do I know how to contact either of them. It would therefore be somewhat difficult, even for me, to demand they accompany me to court. Besides, I doubt it would be wise to take Gerald too close to the dangers of the Tudor shadow.”
Ludovic frowned. He had not suspected his father of knowing about Gerald’s opinion of the Tudor king, and sincerely hoped he knew nothing of his actual activities. He was equally uncomfortable regarding his father’s hints concerning his own secret business, possibly divulged during delirium. “I never indulge in clandestine affairs,” he said with dignity. “But if we’ve been summoned to court, I suppose we have to go. At least her ladyship should be pleased.”
“No doubt,” said the earl. “That eventuality hardly concerns me. We leave the morning of St. Nicholas. You will not disappear, discover distractions of any kind, or fall conveniently ill in the meantime. I do not believe in relapses. Do I make myself clear?”
Ludovic stood on the long grassy slopes curving away from the towering grey stones. He gazed across the partial moat, sluggish and cold within the shade from the castle walls. The portcullis beyond was cranked fully open as it always was. No Welsh wars or foreign invasions threatened the countryside and the portcullis had not been lowered for years, nor the drawbridge raised. The way was clear into the sunny courtyard within, with its guarded gatehouse and the smell of the stables beyond. But Ludovic looked down into the pallid waters and drifting reflections, wondering if they hid the body of a young boy, bare bones sunk to the mud as his flesh was eaten by the fishes and little crabs. After more than two months, Pagan Welles had never been found.
He then looked briefly up at the high portion of the eastern tower where the old existing windows had been enlarged and the glass set in leaded diamonds. That was the Lady Jennine’s quarters, at some distance from Humphrey’s and, close only to the countess’s larger apartments. He knew Alysson Welles now worked there, and through his own endeavours had been taken on as a personal maid to his sister-in-law. He had not seen her since and was unlikely to do so, but he had ridden out once to the small cottage at the edge of the forest where the women Dulce and Ilara lived, and had spoken to them at some length. He had learned that Alysson was content with her new position. He learned that her little brother had never returned, and he reported the failure of his own several organised searches. So Alysson grieved, as they all did, without explanation for the child’s disappearance. And Ludovic learned that the money he had supplied had seemed gloriously extravagant to them, had bought the clothes Alysson needed, would pay for fresh straw, candles, livestock and repairs to the cottage, while also keeping them in food for a year or more.
Ludovic had returned to full health, though a small scar on his left arm, centred on the muscle just below the shoulder, and a far larger scar on the turn of his left thigh, both occasionally reminded him of the previous month when he had lain ill, and spoken too much, it seemed, during his fever. His father had never told him exactly what had been said, and Ludovic did not ask.
But he had no desire to go to court.
It was a week’s interminable journey from the Somerset coast to Sheen, with the trundle of the piled litters and the snorting of the sumpters. During his more secret journeys, Gerald no doubt rode the eastern hills, taking the Fosse Way towards London and arriving in three days. But Gerald did not travel with a wearisome rumble of endless baggage, nor did he take his mother along with him. The countess and her ladies did not appreciate either the jolting of the litter over the bumps and holes of the roads, nor the constant disembarking before the fording of rivers. Speed was impossible. It would be a cold, wet ride and relentlessly tedious.
Humphrey had seen them off. He had been plaintive. “I could come,” he’d said. “After all, I’m the heir. I am the heir, aren’t I, Papa? You said I was.”
“Indeed. And therefore the only one I can leave in charge during my absence, my boy,” said the earl with careful gentleness. “One day this castle will be yours. You must learn to be its guardian.”
“But Jenny would like court, wouldn’t you Jenny?” Humphrey turned up his fur trimmings. It had started to rain. “It’s fun, with lots of food and we don’t even have to pay. The king pays for everything so papa doesn’t complain about extravagance or waste, and we can eat whatever we like. People wear their best clothes, and go hunting. Lots of hunting and killing things. I only ever went to court once, but I liked it lots. I’d like to go again.”
The lady had tucked her arm through her husband’s, and now peeped up, smiling at him. Her face was a little flushed with the cold and the increasing rain spangled her eyelashes. Her lips, swollen pink with the warmth of her rising breath, looked unusually kissable. Ludovic frowned. He wondered if she was happy with her new maid, and whether they were on equable terms, or whether the lady was a harsh mistress in private. It would certainly be impossible to ask. Ludovic banished the absurd thoughts, and waited on his brother’s final goodbyes. He was already mounted and, kept too long inactive in the cold, his horse was becoming fretful.
The earl had ridden off a short distance and was supervising the loading of his countess and her small retinue in the larger litter, well rugged and cushioned. Now alone with Humphrey, Ludovic still watching, the Lady Jennine giggled. “Sweetheart, I shall keep you entertained while the family are away, never fear. I would much sooner be alone with you, my dearest, than go to some boring old palace. You’ll see how much fun we can have. I’ll let you do all those things you enjoy so much, my pet. And you shall teach me to ride again. Only without the horse. And without clothes either. I hate real horses, but you have a saddle I like very much. Like last week, remember?”
Ludovic frowned. This was somewhat more explicit than he was used to hearing from gently brought up females, and he wondered if he had misunderstood. He looked down at his brother again, who was nodding eagerly. Ludovic, then suddenly aware that his good-sister no longer simpered at her husband but up at him, saw her dip into a slow and deliberate curtsey, and, quite as deliberate, close one sweep of pale eyelashes, and wink.
“Do come along, Ludovic,”
the countess called from her padded chariot. “It is frightfully cold and I insist on being at Salisbury before dusk.”
“Highly unlikely,” Ludovic sighed, turning his horse towards his mother. He bowed briefly to the Lady Jennine, and waving to Humphrey, followed the train. The steadying sleet swept into his face, he pulled his hat low over his eyes, tightened his knees, quickening his horse to a trot, and wished himself somewhere else entirely.
The Palace at Sheen was over full and groaning with Christmas celebration. The mummings had already begun, the first miracles staged, the minstrels and jugglers so energetic that no corridor remained empty and no tray of jugs and cups was safe from spillage. Quarters being allocated according to hierarchy, Ludovic found himself in what he promptly called an alcove, adjoining his father’s only slightly larger chamber. A small solar then led to the countess’s larger and more airy bedroom, but since she had cluttered this with the furniture and comforts brought with her and shared it with her two ladies and three maids, few separate servants’ quarters being made available except for the grooms, the atmosphere turned quickly claustrophobic. The earl’s personal dresser slept on the truckle bed in his room, and his page on a pallet under the tiny window. Ludovic had brought no personal staff, being content to use his father’s manservant, and thought this just as well. Aristocracy from such unfashionable places as Somerset were not considered worthy of the very best chambers, but after the problems at Exeter, those loyal to the king were expected to receive some measure of additional royal favour. The Earl of Sumerford had certainly been loyal to his king. He was therefore invited to court.
Edward, Earl of Sumerford, quietly suspected another more surreptitious motive apart from simple gratitude and favour. After four days, he knew he was right.
The great halls of the palace were garlanded in holly, with plaited ivy twined over the ante-chamber’s lower beams. The hearths and sconces were draped with winter-greens and mistletoe kissing boughs were hung below the iron braces of the candle bright chandeliers. A terrifying swelter, reminiscent, Ludovic thought, of his past sickbed, invaded every corner. The nobles wore their ermine and sables as a matter of imperative display but then sweated in considerable discomfort, drooping moustaches and soaking their silks. The ladies wore small pools of sour smelling perspiration in each cleavage, their starched gauzes quickly damp and limp. The servants scurried, flushed a vibrant pink above their livery. No one saw the king, and the queen, it was said, had not yet arrived.
There was incessant gossip, more popular even than feasting, but it made use mainly of coded hint and double meaning for Henry Tudor employed spies. The king’s fear for his crown had always governed his temper ever since his first unexpected and precarious grip on its golden circlet, but lately that fear had grown and multiplied. He was increasingly dangerous to cross, and his suspicions of other men’s intrigues had become inexorable. Even his favourites were said to fear him now, and the great palace at the Tower on the river had become a place of dread instead of the centre for politics and for pleasurable celebration as it had once been.
But celebration at Christmas was obligatory, so the music was high pitched and continuous, while the many miracle and mystery plays were consistently well attended as the king kept court. The food and wine were not quite as plentiful as Humphrey had remembered and the candles allotted to each apartment were counted, for the king was famously parsimonious. But his majesty, although making allowance for the huge sums he had paid over the past six years on foreign espionage and bribing his allies, could not be seen to celebrate the holy birth in any less style than his predecessors.
Ludovic saw him for the first time on the second day. The king was not a small man, but his hunched and narrow shoulders diminished his stature. His mouth was clenched and thin lipped, but his evident lack of humour was not, they said, entirely his own fault. “The king has only four teeth left, and wishes to preserve them,” said the young Earl of Berkhamstead. “And his breath is known to smell of the graveyard. Quite dreadful I believe, though I’m rarely close enough to corroborate.”
Ludovic swung around, surprised. “I understood it was unwise to speak ill of his majesty.”
“I make it a practice to be unwise,” said the young man. “But I have an advantage, being a close relationship to the Woodvilles. It is amazing what an aunt or two in the right places can do for a man. Not that it did the king’s mother-in-law any good, poor lady.”
“My father,” said Ludovic carefully, “is most loyal to the king.”
“Aren’t we all,” smiled the advantaged earl. “I certainly avoid slander at all times, speaking only the truth. Indeed, without my Woodville aunts, I’d also avoid the truth. Sycophantic flattery is so much more practical with kings.”
“I doubt if I’ll have any occasion to speak to his majesty,” said Ludovic. “I should have nothing to say to him, nor him to me. I have few friends at court, and intend leaving immediately after epiphany.”
“If you need another friend, sir,” nodded the young man, “I should be happy to oblige. May I introduce myself? I am Will Grey, second Earl of Berkhamstead, often unwise, rarely sober, but always – intentionally – alert.”
“I’m not entirely sure what you mean, my lord,” said Ludovic, raising one eyebrow.
“Oh, you will soon,” he smiled. “You see, I already know your brother.”
“Damnation,” said Ludovic to his bedchamber walls, sometime after midnight.
His father was lounging against the open doorway which united his own chamber to his son’s. “You are becoming obtuse, Ludovic,” said the earl. “Am I to understand you disapprove of something in particular, or of everything in general?”
“Both,” said Ludovic. “It seems impossible to have any normal conversation without risk of slander, and I haven’t the slightest interest in who copulates with whose wife, mother or daughter, nor who has buggered his page or acquired a new mistress. I don’t care in the slightest about these men’s struggles for land, the argument over widow’s rights, inconvenient enfeofments, heir’s entailments, new or existing attainders or the past or future legal or illegal seizing of property. It seems the reprehensible behaviour of my great grandfather was not so rare after all.”
“My respected grandfather,” said the earl with an unblinking stare, “was a nobleman of peculiar courage. His perfectly legal acquisition of the castle which now houses you, should not be belittled.”
“Perhaps I take after him,” said Ludovic. “At any rate, I’m damned sick of being constantly polite. It’s not in my nature to be continuously careful of what I say. I have no idea who most of these people are, and don’t want to. It’s the damnedest Christmas I’ve spent since Humphrey fell in the moat. All these idiots think about is how to bribe or threaten their way onto the king’s council, or simply the latest fashion in hosiery.”
“Codpieces,” nodded the earl.
“Is that a suggestion, or just an observation, sir?” Ludovic asked politely. “Are you simply cursing or perhaps reminding yourself of something you had forgotten to fasten?”
The earl did not deign to smile. “Fashion becomes increasingly important at court, my son,” he said. “One must stand out from the crowd in some way, but one must not be noticed for any behaviour which might seem ill advised or dangerous. One must be noticed for something innocuous. Fashion is the answer.”
“I shall attempt to take codpieces to heart, sir,” said Ludovic. “Though should I wish to draw attention to myself, it would not be the groin I’d choose to make prominent. In the meantime, do you know an Earl of Berkhamstead? William Grey, I believe, a Woodville relative.”
His father frowned. “Not personally. Only by repute. He is not important.”
“His codpiece,” said Ludovic, “is presumably too small.”
The earl ignored this remark. “Make friends with whom you please, Ludovic. As long as it is no one on the verge of being arrested, though I gather there are plenty of them around. As long a
s you remain diplomatic and use some semblance of whatever small intelligence you have inherited from me, I am not interested in the dreary identities of your chosen companions.”
“You are exceedingly obliging, sir,” smiled Ludovic. “I shall keep your disinterest in mind.”
It snowed. A fine white crust layered the city, drifted upriver across the rising floodwaters of the winter Thames, and found a brief safe home on the palace’s lower window ledges, the angles between the towering chimneys, and the curled ironwork above the doorways where the blustering winds did not reach. There was no hearth in Ludovic’s small chamber, but fires were lit in his parents’ rooms, keeping most of the draughts at bay. Then the snow flurried out and the weather built quickly into a squall. Early morning mass was held at the adjacent chapel, and the short walk back to the palace through its gardens became a wonderland gallop as gentlemen clutched their surcoats tight and ladies clung to their veiled hats. The gentle snow was now a pelting sleet, bouncing back off the pathways to soak every silken hem, and transforming the grass into a muddy sludge.
Ludovic, walking alone and not caring to hurry, felt his arm grasped from behind. He turned around in surprise and discovered his friend of the day before, William of Berkhamstead, crinkled brown eyes and a soaked partridge feather nodding to his nose.
“You look amazed to see me,” said the young man. “Did you think my conversation yesterday so casual that I’d not bother to find you again?”
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