‘We’ll go outside the wall, mistress, there’s a track that takes us down to the nunnery,’ the helpful groom told them.
The sun was well up by the time they passed out of Bishopsgate, but the track was green and thick with meadowsweet as they trotted through. But the reply at St Clare’s was the same as before, though the nuns suggested that St Katherine’s-by-the-Tower might be able to help.
‘But that’s another place for sick folks,’ the groom said as they headed south towards the great white walls of the Tower. ‘Was your friend sickly, m’lady?’
‘I don’t suppose so,’ Eloise said. ‘But we have to meet Sir Crispin at the Tower, so we may as well try it. It’s within a stone’s throw.’
This time, although the sister in charge at St Katherine’s was quite sure that none of their patients bore the name of Cotterell, nor had anyone of that name given birth there within the last year, there was no reason why the ladies should not come inside to take some refreshment and be shown around the wards. The glint of obvious wealth had caught her eye, along with the tinkle of harness-bells and the titled names. Donations were never refused. It was almost noon: refreshment would be most acceptable; they would be delighted to see the wards.
It was soon apparent to Sister Anna that the elder of the two noble sisters and her maid was no novice when it came to the healing of the sick and, as they strolled through clean and airy wards, the visit that had started as a duty developed into a congenial exchange of opinions.
The nuns recruited outside helpers, men and women who lived on the hospital precincts apart from the nuns’ quarters, to help with the heavy work and general duties. Before long, Jolita sauntered off to talk to one of them, a youngish woman who had been hovering in the background as if waiting to catch their attention.
‘Mistress de Molyns?’ the woman said. ‘Forgive me. I caught the name.’ Dressed in the plain unbleached linen gown of a helper, her head enclosed in an old-fashioned wimple, the woman emanated a softness that was both tender and sensual. Her wide dark eyes were steady beneath beautiful brows, her cheekbones delicate and high, though her pale lips were too tightly compressed with weariness to smile readily.
‘Jolita de Molyns of Handes, in Derbyshire,’ Jolita said. ‘Do we know each other, mistress?’
‘My name is O’Farrell,’ the woman whispered. ‘No, we have not met, but I know of you and Lady Eloise from your brother, Sir Rolph.’
‘You know our brother?’ Jolita frowned. ‘How so?’
Mistress O’Farrell was not inclined to go into details while her employer was in sight. ‘I would like to be allowed to speak with you both. Do you think that would be possible? Beyond the porter’s lodge? I shall be on my way home in a few moments. Please,’ she insisted. ‘It is important.’
Jolita was not convinced. ‘It’s also rather mysterious,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t—’
‘Thank you.’ The woman turned and left as Sister Anna and her guests approached, leaving Jolita as much perplexed as curious.
Leaving Sister Anna overcome by their generosity, the three women dismounted as the figure of Mistress O’Farrell came into view where the wooden gates of St Katherine’s-by-the-Tower were just hidden by the white-blossomed elders.
Intrigued, Eloise wondered how this woman could have come into contact with their brother when the hospital took in only women patients, but whatever she half-expected, the truth was more surprising.
The woman lost none of her dignity as she told them. ‘I am Sir Rolph’s mistress,’ she said, ‘for lack of a better description.’
The affairs of the last few days had helped to prepare Eloise for startling news, last night’s being the most recent. Even so, while she displayed no outward sign of shock, the possibility of her brother’s liaison with any woman other than the domineering Grissle was not something she had ever seriously contemplated. Her expression, to her credit, remained implacable. ‘Ah! Rolph’s mistress. Then you must be Marie,’ she said, watching the large eyes widen in astonishment.
‘You knew? He’s already told you about me, my lady?’
Eloise’s fingers found their way to her purse-chain hanging from her girdle, toying with it. Now she understood more clearly Rolph’s strange request for Marie, the eldest daughter who, although dear to him, was not as close as she had suggested to Father Janos. But to have named Lady Griselle’s eldest daughter after his mistress was taking a risk that verged on madness, for if his wife should ever find out, the repercussions would be more than Rolph could bear. Eloise recalled his face, his words—‘it’s hell…sheer hell…’—and knew that while it was not uncommon for a man to have his own private life, Griselle was not the kind to accept another woman without sustained and violent protest. Harridan wives were not uncommon either. Nor weak husbands like Rolph.
‘Our brother rarely shares his confidences with us, Mistress O’Farrell. Well, not consciously, anyway. But come, shall we sit over here on the bank? My sister and I would like to hear your story. How is it that you are working here at the convent hospital? Is it voluntary work that you do?’
The young lady’s hands, although reddened and rough, remained demurely in her lap, twisting a stalk of grass. ‘Sister Anna would no doubt be pleased to have it so,’ she said, composedly, ‘but I need every penny I can earn. I have a child, you see. A boy. Christopher.’
Eloise took a deep breath.
It was Jolita who asked her, ‘How old?’
‘He’s eight,’ Mistress O’Farrell said. ‘But he’s been sickly now for going on two years. Sister Anna believes me to be a widow, but I’ve never been married. I don’t live on the convent site like most of the others, so a neighbour cares for Christopher while I’m at work. She’s getting old, though.’
‘I see,’ Jolita said. ‘Mistress O’Farrell, my sister and I are sorry to hear about your child, but if you wanted to talk to us about financial problems—’
Abruptly, the grave-eyed young lady gathered her skirts and stood, not looking directly at either of them. ‘Forgive me for wasting your time. I bid you good day, ladies.’ She turned to walk away.
Saskia and Eloise caught at her hands just in time. ‘Mistress O’Farrell…please…don’t go! Please come back. My sister had no intention of insulting you. Come, sit with us again and tell us. Your son, Christopher, is he…?’
With a sigh and a slight show of reluctance, Marie O’Farrell sat again, finding it impossible to resist talking of her child. ‘Yes, he is your brother’s son. And it’s not money I am asking you for, my lady, it’s news. I’ve had no messages from Sir Rolph for some time, and your appearance came like a ray of hope, a chance to find out how he is. I hoped you might be able to tell me something of him, that’s all.’
As gently as they could, they gave her news of the injuries which had prevented Rolph from making contact with her, and though they understood that his well-being was her main concern, it was impossible for them not to be aware that she had relied on him for some support. It was also clear that she was anxious for Lady Griselle de Molyns to remain unaware of her existence.
‘He called his eldest daughter after me,’ she told them, without boasting. ‘We met well before his marriage to Lady Griselle, but I was not suitable, you see, being of common stock. I would never have been accepted. His friends discovered, and that was a nightmare for him, poor Rolph, but no one could have been more loyal. Never once has he blamed me.’
‘Blamed you for what, mistress?’ Eloise probed, gently.
‘Well, for being the cause of his worries,’ Mistress O’Farrell said.
There was a pause in the narrative during which Eloise hoped she might explain further, but this woman was no chatterbox. ‘You are talking about blackmail, are you not, mistress? His friends blackmailed him to keep them quiet? To keep this information from Lady Griselle?’
‘Only one. Not the others. They were more understanding, as it turned out.’
‘My late husband? Sir Piers Gerrard? He was th
e one?’
‘Look…Lady Eloise…please understand. I was not aware that you knew anything of this, but I was willing to risk it because I need to have news of your brother. Even to know that he lies injured is better than not knowing anything. But the last thing I want you to think is that I wish to speak ill of your late husband. I’m sure he had his reasons.’
‘Believe me, Mistress O’Farrell, I need information as much as you do. I am about to make another marriage, God willing. My affairs must all be in order before I do; all ends tied up. And that means my late husband’s affairs. I know about my brother’s loans to him, but…’
‘Loans? No, my lady, as you say, it was blackmail. Sir Rolph has been drained over the years to buy Sir Piers’s silence, yet he would not give me up as I said he should. He adores Christopher, and our son adores his father.’
‘When did Sir Rolph begin these payments to Sir Piers?’
‘Oh, some years ago, my lady. Before you and Sir Piers were married. I think Christopher was still a toddler when Sir Piers found out. He’d probably heard it from the others. He was not a well-known jouster at that time, and I think Sir Rolph believed he’d be glad to take a one-off payment and go away. But Sir Piers did well at Crécy in forty-six, and the king gave him the Staffordshire property next to your brother’s estate, as you know. It must have been the cost of rebuilding, equipping himself for tournaments, and having so many…’ She hesitated, biting at her lip.
‘Mistresses. Yes, I found that out, too.’ Having been told only recently of the expensiveness of mistresses, Eloise understood her dilemma. All the same, the added information painted an ugly picture of how Sir Piers had systematically drained her brother of money which Sir Rolph then tried to pass off, to Eloise and to his wife, as unrecorded loans, attempting to claim them back from Eloise at his wife’s insistence. In a way, it was understandable that Rolph would have desperately tried any device to hold on to this lovely woman and his son while at the same time trying to keep their existence a secret from his family.
‘I’m sorry, my lady, perhaps I should not have… It was selfish of me. I was desperate for news. I must go home to my child. But…’ she turned to Eloise, searching her eyes as if for some scrap of kindness ‘…could you get a message to Sir Rolph for me? Please?’
‘Of course I can. But could you do something for me in exchange? Allow us to see Christopher, then I shall be able to tell Rolph I’ve seen him and, apart from that, we may be able to help him.’
Tears flooded uncontrollably into Marie O’Farrell’s eyes as she stood, and she would have stumbled but for Saskia and Jolita’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she croaked. ‘Yes, thank you.’
To both Eloise and Jolita, it was becoming increasingly difficult to untangle the information into its relevant compartments, for while neither of them were naïve, nor were they particularly artful. It was true that men had occasional mistresses and, while not being exactly condoned, this was never something a man flaunted before his wife, nor could she expect to be particularly flattered by it. Eloise, believing her husband to be as much a man as any other as far as women were concerned, would have accepted that he had one mistress, even two. But to learn that he was a shameless libertine who habitually took other men’s wives and blackmailed those he called friends was news that no woman, particularly a newly married one, would accept without feeling shame, humiliation and betrayal. A man’s honour was as important as his lineage, and Sir Piers’s behaviour was dishonourable in the extreme.
Marie O’Farrell apparently knew nothing of the fact that her lover had been using the proceeds from his wife’s dowry, raised with her permission from her estates, to pay for Sir Piers’s silence. Which was probably why, both Eloise and Jolita agreed, Marie and her son were now living in such appalling conditions when they should have been comfortable. It must have been some time since he had been to visit her there or, presumably, he would have done more to help. At the same time, neither of the sisters could help pitying and liking the woman. She was modest, sweet, and unpretentious, and was concerned more for her son than for herself, and they were more relieved than shocked to find that Rolph loved a woman who was as far from his wife’s ungracious nagging as it was possible to be. What a pity he had not been able to marry her. His behaviour was weak and underhand, but Sir Piers’s behaviour was blatantly amoral in every respect.
Chapter Nine
The royal armoury at the Tower was every bit as diverse in its fabrications as the other departments of the King’s Great Wardrobe, though neither Eloise nor Jolita had realised that the embroiderers worked here on banners, trappings and pennants for the royal ceremonials. If they had arrived at the Tower from the town, however, instead of through the postern gate in the wall, they might have been able to keep their visit to Mistress O’Farrell’s home a secret from Sir Owain longer than they did. He was waiting for them with some impatience.
‘Where’ve ye been?’ he said, lifting Eloise out of the saddle.
‘St Katherine’s-by-the-Tower,’ she replied, ‘talking to Sister Anna. They have a reputation for healing second to none, you know.’
‘All this time?’
With a promise of the full story after their visit to the Tower, Sir Owain had to be content for the time being. So while Jolita and Saskia went to visit the broderers, Eloise and Sir Owain found a corner away from the hammering of metal and the shouting of orders where they could sit on a window-ledge overlooking the wide brown river.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘Scandal? Gossip?’
‘More than that.’ She told him of Marie O’Farrell, of her relationship with Sir Rolph and of the sad conditions in which she lived in a small cottage where her precious son was growing more sickly every day from lack of proper nourishment and sanitation. The air was often polluted by butchers’ offal thrown into the street, the water fouled in the well, the earth-closet leaked sewage, the nearby river alive with mosquitoes. Even in daylight, rats scampered boldly across the thatch while the lad with Rolph’s sandy hair played listlessly with a mongrel bitch and her mewling pups.
Eloise and Jolita had been angry and sickened that Rolph had not done better for his mistress than that. They had given Mistress O’Farrell money, which she had not wanted but could hardly refuse, and they had promised to send some healing potions to ease Christopher’s sores, as his mother would take nothing from St Katherine’s pharmacy.
Well before she had concluded her tale, Eloise realised from Sir Owain’s lack of surprise that he must have known of Rolph’s unfaithfulness.
His eyes had hardly left her face, but now they softened with tenderness as he picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘My caring one,’ he said, ‘yes, I did know about Rolph’s London woman, but a man’s mistresses are his own affair unless it affects oneself or one’s friends, and then we stick together for protection. As long as Lady Griselle doesn’t get to hear of it, he’ll be all right.’
‘Is that what you truly believe?’ she said, withdrawing her hand.
‘Yes, that’s what I believe. And I’ve told you, my outraged green-eyed beauty, that I do not keep mistresses, nor do I intend to. Too expensive by half, as you’ve just seen.’
Eloise stood up. ‘Is that the only reason, sir?’
He caught her hand before she could move beyond his reach and pulled her on to his knee, holding her helpless within his arms as he kissed her throat, moving down over the wide open neckline of her surcoat. ‘It’s the only reason you’re going to get,’ he said, between kisses, ‘until tonight. I shall return to Sheen with you and your father this afternoon. I don’t intend to spend another night on my own while you go off in another direction. There now, woman, let there be no more doubting, eh?’ He let her up, laughing at her flushed cheeks.
Straightening her surcoat, she pretended indignation. ‘So your wounds are healing, it seems.’
‘Yes, my sweet. They are. You’ll be able to make a full examination of them later. Now, where has your sister got to? Your father
’s eager to be away, and we have to eat and then call at Cold Harbour and the Strand for your belongings.’
Eloise had no intention of telling Sir Owain anything she had discovered about Sir Piers’s blackmailing of her brother, knowing that he would forbid her to make further enquiries. Nor did she believe for one moment that her brother was the only man Sir Piers had tried to blackmail. But her sister’s ostensibly innocent quest to see how gold thread was made had yielded far more than that, for she and Saskia returned subdued and unsmiling, unable to explain much of the process.
‘Tell you later,’ Jolita whispered in answer to Eloise’s enquiry. She would say no more.
It was only in the privacy of Jolita’s chamber at the house on the Strand that she and Saskia were able to speak. She exchanged an enigmatic glance with the maid.
‘For pity’s sake,’ Eloise said, impatiently, ‘tell me what you’ve found out.’
‘Well,’ Jolita said, ‘if the two young gossips I spoke to had known I was Sir Crispin de Molyns’s daughter, we’d not have found out anything.’
‘So who did they think you were?’
‘You’re not going to believe this.’
‘Try me.’
‘Father’s mistress.’
‘Father’s what?’
‘It’s going to be one of those memorable days, love,’ Jolita said, ‘when shocks follow each other so fast you might miss one if you blink. Apparently, Father has a mistress. And when we strolled along, that’s who they thought I was, his mistress and her maid, come to see.’
‘Jollie! I can hardly believe it! Why?’
‘Why does he need a mistress? Well, it appears to be a sad fact of life, dearest, that any man who spends time away from home cannot exist for long without a woman in his bed. Not even Father.’
Eloise sat without speaking, trying to imagine what her mother would say if she knew. Perhaps she already did, like the queen knew about the king.
‘And that’s not all,’ Jolita said, coming to sit by her side. ‘These two young men, while they were busy cutting sheets of beaten gold into strips, told us what they knew about Sir Piers, too.’
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