They were moving, Isabella realized, the horse piling through a vast puddle with the man splashing carelessly alongside. Another moment and they would be within sight of the grand houses and palaces of the river, and, to the north, the goldsmiths’ new guildhall, still being built.
It would not do for him to escort her there with so many wagging tongues eager to take the news to Sir William. If need be, I shall tell my own gossip and, please God, be rewarded for it with a visit to or from my son.
“Here,” she called, pointing to a small glover’s shop tucked around the corner of a crooked alley. “This is my place.”
The stranger reined in at once. Before Isabella could stir he swept her off his horse and lightly onto the cobbles, nodding to the wide-eyed glover. “I will see you safe within.”
“There is no need.” Conscious of his height and breadth and easy strength, Isabella felt heat tiding into her face. She prayed she was not blushing. “Thank you for your help, Sir…?”
He smiled, his eyes still bright with amusement, and answered readily, “Stephen Fletcher, at your service, Mistress Angel.”
Isabella automatically gasped. The very man I have to win! All calculation deserted her as they stared at each other. What will it be like to be in Stephen’s arms? What will his kisses be like?
Heedless of the prickling rain, Stephen studied her for a long moment, his eyes narrowing as if he guessed her thoughts. Isabella forced herself to bow her head, her breath threatening to stop as she waited, crucified by his silence. What now? Should I say more, do more?
She felt a gentle touch, softer than rain, brush against her cheek.
“I pass this way tomorrow,” he said softly. “I need new gloves.”
“I shall be here.” Why did I say that? ‘Tis madness to promise anything!
“Until tomorrow, Mistress Angel.” Stroking another raindrop from her flushed face and raising a hand in farewell, Stephen mounted his bay and cantered off in the direction of the river.
Chapter 2
Within the great hall of her dead husband’s kindred, Isabella stood, as ordered, beside the small spring fire and traced a fire tong with her foot. She had sent a messenger to Sir William, informing him of her chance encounter with Stephen Fletcher, and hoped her uncle would allow her to see Matthew in return. That hope had been swiftly dashed.
Sir William leaned forward on his seat. “You did not tell Stephen Fletcher your name?”
“There was no time. But I will return to the glovers to wait for him and then—”
“Absolutely not!” Sir William leapt to his feet. “He must see you as a lady to be wooed and won, not a common strumpet!”
“You said I should be available and willing to be his mistress.”
Sir William stormed from the dais and slapped her. “Do not be insolent with me! You present yourself as a gentlewoman. Stephen Fletcher is the armorer to the duke, not a stable-hand!”
“Not a blacksmith then?” Isabella countered, amazed at herself. “I have a plan for that,” she went on, with a steely calmness she did not feel. “Sir Nicholas has approved it.”
At the mention of one of the most powerful men in the goldsmiths’ guild, Sir William became very still and quiet. “How is this possible?” he demanded. “How do you even know him?”
“I agreed the details yesterday, while I was out fetching wine and oysters,” Isabella replied. “I am one of the maidens in the golden cages.”
That silenced her uncle by marriage, but it gave her little satisfaction. Still Sir William will not let me visit my son.
Her face smarted and her teeth ached but that was nothing. The tears blurring her vision were not because of the slap. I hoped, really hoped, that he would let me see Matthew again. Sometimes she feared that he would never relent.
****
A few days later, Isabella, with a frowning Amice hovering close, climbed carefully out of the jetty window of Sir Nicholas’ house and into a tall, gilded cage suspended above the cobbles of Cheapside. The dawning May sun glittered on the fragile walls of her “prison” and the road below was unusually clean. She had been one of those sent out to scrub the cobbles only the day before.
“Fine weather at last and a good day for the procession,” Amice remarked, her hands gripped firmly on the window ledge. “But it will be hours yet.”
Isabella shrugged. “I am here now.” And out of reach of my kindred, should they change their minds and decide another of the family’s womenfolk should bring honor to this spot.
Amice tugged on the cage, her dark brows heavy with suspicion. “The front of this is very low. Mind you do not take a fainting fit and tumble out.”
Isabella smiled and reached back through the window to hug her friend. “I shall be very well. Have you the gold and silver flowers?”
“Safe in a basket at my feet. Listen! The church bells are chiming. It will soon begin.”
Isabella felt a frisson of excitement though, as Amice had said, it would be hours yet before the procession reached her cage. It would take an age for all the grand folk to cross the city, the members of the guilds, all in their livery, Prince Edward and his retinue, and finally the captured French king. Her Londoners were a curious people and they would gather in their hundreds to witness this fine spectacle. Already she could see crowds clustering in the nearby streets and men and women in the houses looking down onto Cheapside, opening the shutters of their upper windows to enjoy the view. She leaned out and looked toward the looming spire of Saint Paul’s, along the broad, smooth road known simply as The Street in the city, where the goldsmiths had their shops and houses.
“Be careful, Issa,” Amice whispered urgently behind her. “You are no use to Matthew with a broken neck.”
But it is so glorious today, so warm and gold. The sky is like a cornflower. I know all will be well. It must be well. Isabella turned and smiled to reassure her friend. Stretching out her hands, she clasped Amice’s, tight about the window-ledge. “Why not go downstairs?” she said softly, aware of her friend’s dislike of heights. “You will be closer to the princes, when they come.”
Amice shook her head, her dark curls flying. “Closer to lewd fellows and sweaty prentices, too.”
“For today the street is filled with rose petals,” Isabella tempted her.
“For today I shall stay here, as I promised, with you.” Amice swallowed and deliberately unclenched her fists, planting her hands on her hips and her head on one side. “You are saffron-bright today, Issa, and you smell better.”
“Thanks to your perfumes,” Isabella laughed, flicking one of the long gold earrings that Amice habitually wore and silently admiring her companion’s elegant, red velvet gown. Her own dress was more ornate, a pink tunic over a green kirtle with trailing sleeves, richly embroidered in gold with the badges of Sir William’s family. She wore a gold crespine in her red-gold hair and her mother-in-law Margery had insisted she don a pair of white gloves that already felt sticky. “Do you think the French king will be handsome?”
“We shall see. I am more interested to see your man. You will point him out to me?”
“Of course.” Horns blew in the distance and Isabella turned to face The Street again, wondering how long it would be before she caught sight of Stephen in the retinue of the duke.
“It is good that you know what he looks like, though no thanks to your family.”
“I think he will be kind,” Isabella murmured, to reassure herself.
Behind her, Amice made a sound in her throat to show that she was less than convinced. “What will he do if he sees you? If he recognizes you and thinks you duped him in your first meeting?”
“He is kind,” Isabella repeated. “I am sure of it.” Soon I will know and pray God I am right.
For now she could only wait and watch and pick her time to fall, as fall she must.
****
His daughter slept in his arms now, so peacefully. Stephen did not want to leave her. He did not want to venture
back into the slop bucket of London and parade like a dancing bear with the nobles and great of the city. His daughter was finally at rest and he wanted to stay with her.
Stephen frowned and rolled his powerful shoulders, spying the pink and gold of dawn through the small gap in the closed shutter casement and regarding it not as the blessing of a new day but an ever-present challenge. These breathing fits of Joanna’s terrified her and racked him with impotent despair. Before his wife Cecilia had died his daughter had been a bright, spirited girl and had never sickened. He had striven for honor and power, proud of his skill, eager to show off his connections to Duke Henry, the foremost knight of the world. He had married Cecilia for her wit, bearing and land and had never expected to love her. Unlacing, happy love had ambushed him all the same. She had become his moon and sun, cool, tranquil and elegant by day, rosy, glowing and tingling by night.
His wife haunted him. He sought her in dreams and in the outer world—a warm glance from a woman, the call or gesture of some unknown girl were all sweet reminders of Cecilia, who lived anew in them for him.
“How can she be dead?” he muttered, twitching away at the thought as a horse does at a gadfly. Joanna, sucking her thumb, rolled in his arms as Cecilia had once rolled in bed toward him and he grieved afresh. “How could she leave us?”
It had not been the pestilence, but she had been three days in the dying, trying to expel his son in a long, dreadful child-birth. The midwife had urged him to save the boy but he had wanted Cecilia, not some changeling stranger. In the bitter end he had lost them both and the world had turned gray, the charge after glory meaningless. He was two years a widower and still his grief was battle-sword sharp at times.
The door to the small solar at the back of the timber house creaked open and his sister bustled in. “Still not groomed, Stevie?” she scolded, lifting Joanna from his arms and tucking the child into the small bed beneath the window. “You should look your best and who knows? You may see your London glover’s girl again.”
Stephen grunted a response, wishing he had never spoken of the lass. Worse, Bedelia knew he had returned to the city to watch for her—his sister never said anything but he knew she knew.
‘Tis all folly, he told himself, for the wench had vanished, as teasing and unreal as the glass nail he had once been told to find when first apprenticed. She had been a spirited creature, too, with a sadness clinging about her slender limbs as if she had lost someone dear. He would have liked to discover more of her, but then it was plain her life was not her own. He had searched several glovers’ shops for her, without success.
“Probably married,” he remarked, sensing his older sister’s knowing glance on him. “Certainly a liar. All women are.” He rose and stretched, putting his palms on the white-washed ceiling.
“Nonsense. I have lit a candle in church for you to find her again.”
Stephen shot a quick look at Joanna in case she overheard and thought him disrespectful to her mother, but his daughter slumbered on, coiled in the sheets like a baby hedgehog in leaves. “You will let her sleep?”
“Until she wakes by nature.”
“You meddle, sister.”
“Nonsense!” Bedelia flicked him with her spindle as he edged past her. She was tall, as he was, and handsome, especially when her features were animated, as now. “If our saint denies me a good wax candle on this bright day it is a poor thing. But you, set to! Shave your chin, comb your hair, wash your face.”
“Yes, mamma.” Bedelia’s husband Alan was a merchant and Stephen lodged at their house when Alan was away at sea. My sister forgets I am not a child anymore, though I bless her for her care of my Joanna. He slipped round the door and strode off into the great hall to escape more instructions. The blaze of sunshine through the narrow minstrel’s gallery put him in mind of the mystery girl’s red-gold eyebrows and lashes and he grinned, finally catching the promise of the day.
London is a spit-pot but the girl is there somewhere and today, with the guilds scrambling to display for the French king, I will find her again, pray God. She had reminded him of Cecilia, but different, intriguing.
The quest pleased him and he broke into a run, hurrying to meet the day.
****
Two hours later, riding his most docile horse with his best hunting dog trotting alongside, Stephen resigned himself to the spectacle. His father would have loved all of this, his being in London, part of the retinue of Duke Henry and Prince Edward, close enough so he could actually see the French king’s stately white palfrey and almost touch the captive monarch’s rich black tunic. Cecilia would have loved the scattered rose petals, the gleaming streets and the kingfisher brightness of the English knights, arrayed in their best. He was less pleased to be in a stiff new tunic and tight new hose, the more so since one of the knights of the garter had hissed in his ear to be on the look out for lurking assassins on the roof-tops.
“The merchants promise the streets are safe but what do they know?” the burly knight had spat. “Duke Henry wants you to look, you have the keenest eyes.” And a wicked way with a throwing knife the knight might have added, as both of them knew it.
So he was watching, guarding, and mighty glad of his lord’s trust. But, as he twisted to and fro in the saddle, glancing from roof top to roof top, the new cloth chafed the back of his neck.
Going soft, Stephen? Ignoring the bawling of the mob he fixed on the jetties and roof tiles, staring into shadows and sun-flashes. The gaudy troop of soldiers and knights, already shifting at a slow canter, settled into a meandering amble as the road through Cheapside broadened between the grander houses belonging to the members of the goldsmith’s guild.
“Ici, là!” cried Prince Edward, sweeping a bejeweled gloved arm toward the upper storeys. Beside him, on his taller horse, the French king looked up and softly applauded. Stephen scanned the ridge tiles of the freshly-painted, gilded houses and glanced where the prince was pointing.
There she is. He smiled.
He recognized her instantly by the proud tilt of her head, her sweetly handsome profile and those glowing eyes, more compelling even than the luxuriant gold of her hair or her sumptuous costume.
Goldsmith’s garb and no glover’s girl for sure, he thought, reining in his horse and slowing to admire her the more as she shimmered above him like the evening star. Encased in a narrow cage of gold suspended above the cobbles, he saw that she was one of twelve maidens positioned high above the street, all caged, all lovely, but his gaze returned to her alone. Already the others seemed pale shadows, water ripples, echoes. But she is stunning. Above the roar of blood in his ears he heard the ribald comments of Prince Edward and knew he also approved of her.
By a mighty effort of will Stephen tore his attention away from this bewitching, naughty beauty and returned to scanning roofscapes. Still his eyes kept flitting back as he silently willed her to turn within her cage, to look out, to look back, to see him.
Know me, girl. Wonder at me, as I do at you. He was torn between admiration and a longing to kiss her thoroughly for her deception. Kissing you will be a sweet revenge.
She was tossing flowers, delicate metal posies of gold and silver that streaked the cobbles like flashing dewdrops or sun-flashed rain, pretty trinkets that the populace would certainly scramble for as soon as the nobles had passed. Still staring toward Westminster, although she must surely know by the mutter of the crowd that the foremost Prince of England and King of France rode right beneath her cage, she scattered another handful of golden petals, seemingly oblivious to the gasps of admiration. Silhouetted against the dark, smoke-stained jetty of the house, her slim body made a pleasing, subtle curve.
The picture she created then reminded him of Cecilia, dancing for him alone in their private chamber with her hair loose, spinning round on the spot with her dark locks flowing and her arms weaving around the bed-posts. Pierced by the memory he felt his horse stumble, crushing one of the metal flowers and rearing. He reined his mount in before it co
uld trample any of the thronging crowd, speaking soothingly, gentling the beast and all the while watching the girl—the girl now, not Cecilia, not even in memory.
See me. Look at me.
****
Isabella’s feet ached in her new shoes, her hands itched furiously within her new gloves and her face felt increasingly sun-scorched. Thinking of her son she kept smiling, throwing flowers, ignoring all Amice’s mutterings at her back as the cage swung and tilted each time she stirred.
“The prince!” Amice called, her voice one of many as London cooed like doves, proud of its nobility today and even more of itself. Isabella knew the royal party was within feet of her, that soon the heir to the throne of England could reach up off his small black horse and brush the base of her cage with his gloved hand or feathered cap, but she held her pose of looking away. Somewhere, please all the saints, somewhere in that glittering retinue was surely Stephen Fletcher.
Please, Holy Mother, let him be here with his prince and lord, please, for the sake of my son.
She swung round in her cage, clasping one of the gilded wooden bars for support, giving Amice a quick smile to show she was safe and tipping another golden hailstorm of posies over the closing nobility. Pretending an imperiousness she was far from feeling, she lowered her head slowly, as if the retinues clustered in the street beneath her were as insignificant as bugs.
He’s here! At once her breathing quickened as her body jolted. The gilded cage shook around her, as if caught in a sudden storm.
“He is here?” Forgetting her fear of heights, Amice leaned right out of the window. Isabella caught her back.
“Stephen is the tall, well-made man on the gray horse, just behind that fat knight of the garter,” she said, the admission huge in her mouth as if she was chewing on pebbles.
“Saffron and pepper, he is handsome! A man to dream of when he is not busy in your bed.”
Lindsay Townsend Page 2