He laughed. “A polite term for highway robbery! It does work like this. The King summons one of our wealthier citizens to the royal presence, greets said citizen with flattering warmth, bedazzles with the royal charm, and then expresses his confidence that said citizen will be well disposed toward making a voluntary contribution to the royal treasury…a rather large contribution, needless to say. Not surprisingly, sweetheart, most do prefer to turn out their purses rather than turn down their King!”
“How clever! But if he has such a need for money, then the talk must be true? That he means to go to war with France?”
“Yes, I fancy that he will. There are more than straws in the wind these days. In July, he did sign a treaty with Burgundy, avowing that an English army would land in France before a twelve-month had passed. Last month, he betrothed his third daughter, little Cecily, to the eldest son of the King of Scotland, so he need not fear trouble from the Scots while he does deal with France. And given the way he’s been exerting himself to raise money, I rather think we’ll be marching on Paris ere too many months go by.”
“Do you want to go to war, Will?”
“Not particularly,” he conceded carelessly, and then held out his hand. “Come here,” he said, and she laughed, rose sleek and dripping from the bath water. She was reaching for a bath towel when the bedchamber door burst open. Will sat up with an oath, and she hastily splashed down into the tub again as Will’s steward stumbled into the chamber.
“My lord, the King is here! They be below in the great hall even now and—” He spun around in the doorway; they heard him gasp, “Your Grace!” and Edward strode past him into the chamber.
“In bed at midday, Will? What ails you?” But if the question was directed at Will, his eyes were directed elsewhere, were taking in the girl in the bathing tub, eyes that missed no detail of glistening wet skin, open red mouth, tumbled blonde hair.
“I withdraw the question,” he said, and laughed.
Will gestured abruptly to his steward. “Return to the great hall. See to the comfort of those with the King’s Grace.”
He tucked the sheet around him, swung a leg over the edge of the bed, but Edward waved him back. “Don’t bestir yourself…not on my behalf!” He moved forward into the chamber, and as the door closed behind the steward, said, “We were on our way upriver from the Tower to Westminster when the storm did hit. I thought it best to put in at Paul’s Wharf, and your house being nearby, it seemed to offer the most inviting shelter. Alas,” he said, and laughed softly, “I see I’m about as welcome as a visitation of the French pox!”
He glanced back at the girl, who was staring up at him like one doubting the evidence of her own senses. As he approached the tub, she crossed one arm over her breasts, but she did not, Will noticed, make any move to draw the tented curtains around the bath.
“My liege, you…” She ran her tongue over her lips. “You do have me at a disadvantage….”
“I’d surely hope so,” he said, and grinned. “Do you not mean to rise and greet your King?”
She blushed, the first time Will had ever seen her do so, and then dimpled. “I’d do so gladly, Your Grace, but I can scarcely ask you to hand me a towel!”
“Why not?” Edward reached, not for the towel she indicated, but for the washing cloth that hung over the rim of the tub. “Will this do?” he drawled, and she burst out laughing.
Will was torn between amusement and an emotion he’d never before experienced where Edward was concerned, something startlingly akin to jealousy.
“All the books of courtesy I did read as a boy are agreed that it be the height of bad manners to seduce a man’s mistress in his own bathing tub,” he observed dryly, and Edward laughed.
“I suspect I’ve just been politely asked to take myself off! I suspect, too, that I’ll see Hell freeze over ere I get your mermaid’s name out of you, Will!”
“Mistress Shore,” Will said, with an exaggerated show of feigned reluctance that was, in actuality, quite real.
“Elizabeth Jane,” she volunteered quickly, smiling up at Edward like one blinded by the sun.
Her shyness, Will noted, had dispersed as rapidly as the steam rising from her bath water. She had leaned forward, and resting her folded arms on the rim of the tub, was saying with the ease of long acquaintance, “My father—John Lambert of the Mercer’s Company—does call me Eliza, but all others have called me Jane for as long as I can remember, which be the name I do prefer myself.”
“So do I,” Edward said, and smiled at her. “There be so many Elizabeths in my life already, but that I can recall, nary a single Jane!”
He was no sooner out of the room than Jane scrambled from the tub, and scorning towels, flung herself onto the bed next to Will.
“Oh, Will, I cannot believe it! That he was here, not an arm’s length away! And found me fair to look upon! He did, didn’t he? Oh, Will!”
She was wet and eager in his arms, soft and slippery, covering his mouth with her own, her hands sliding down his body, until he found himself responding to her need even as he told himself that her excitement, her passion, was not for him, was for Ned.
After they’d both been satisfied, lay entwined in the sheets and in each other’s arms, he listened in silence as she spoke of Edward.
“…and the first time I did see him…thirteen years ago it was, Will…in February, the month before he won Towton. I was eight and he was not yet King. My father took me to the churchyard at St Paul’s; I’ve never forgotten. He rode a white stallion, wore armor like to blind you, so bright it was, the most beautiful being I’ve ever seen or hope to see, like one of the archangels….”
Will gave a derisive hoot. “Ned’s been called many things in his life, but ‘archangel’ be a first!”
She pretended to pout. “Laugh if you will, but that’s how he did seem to me that day….”
“It sounds as if you’re still afflicted by the same faulty vision!”
“Why, Will!” She rose up on her elbow to better see his face; her own reflected astonishment. “You do sound as if you be jealous!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” he snapped, and after a pause, she settled back into his arms.
“I am being silly, aren’t I?” she agreed, sounding faintly embarrassed. “After all, who could be jealous of the King?”
“Who, indeed?” he said tersely.
After a time, she fell asleep. He lay still, listening to the fading echoes of winter rain as the storm moved southward and the sky began to clear over the city. It was so unexpected and unfamiliar, this jealousy of Ned, that he didn’t know how to handle it. Ned was more than his sovereign. He loved Ned fully as much as he did his own brothers. When he thought of the women they’d shared over the years, the mistresses they’d traded, the conquests passed back and forth…Why; then, was Jane Shore different? Why should he care whether Ned did bed her or not? He didn’t fully understand why it bothered him, only knew that it did.
By the time Edward’s summons came, Jane had just about given up hope. For ten days she’d been daydreaming about Edward, fantasizing how he’d be as a lover, assuring herself that he could find her with no undue difficulty; hadn’t she made sure to let him know her father was a member of the Mercer’s Company? But the days passed and she at last concluded that she’d been deluding herself. How could she have thought to fly so high, to fancy that the King would take to his bed a mercer’s daughter?
At sight of the Yorkist colors, her heart began to pound so that she scarcely could hear the message delivered. Not that it mattered; she’d have gone anywhere without question or qualm, let this stranger escort her to the ends of the earth if that be Edward’s wish. She had time only to tuck a small flask of perfume into a cloth purse and attach it to her belt, then to find pen and ink and scribble to her husband a hasty excuse for her absence, thanking God and her father that she’d been taught to read and write.
It was past Compline by the time the barge tied up at the King’s Wha
rf. Edward was awaiting her in his bedchamber. She had a quick glimpse of a table set for two, of wine flagons and silver chafing dishes, and then she sank down before him in a deep curtsy. Her knowledge of royal etiquette was sketchy at best; hoping she was performing the gesture correctly, she touched her lips to his coronation ring, and then impulsively pressed her mouth to his palm.
He raised her up, kept his hands on her shoulders.
“I’m glad you could come on such little notice. Are you hungry?”
Jane had never been one to pretend, saw no reason to start now. She did not want to sit across a table from him, to make desultory conversation, to pose polite questions and feign interest in his answers, and all the while wanting only to taste his mouth, to feel his hands on her body, his weight over her in what had to be the largest feather bed she’d ever seen.
She shook her head slowly, saw by his smile that her forthrightness amused him.
“Neither am I,” he said, and, with a peremptory gesture, dismissed the ushers waiting to serve them.
He was considerably taller than she; as he brought his mouth down to hers, she had to strain upward, had to cling to him to keep her balance. He solved this disparity in height by lifting her up in his arms, carrying her to the bed, where they lay together and found prolonged pleasure in each other’s bodies, more than he’d expected.
Jane had begun to slant surreptitious looks toward the bedside candle marked to measure the passing hours. It was not that she wanted to leave; never had she wanted anything less. She was accustomed to fancying herself in love with one man or another, gave her heart as generously as she did her body. Generally, her feelings were intense in nature and brief in duration. But nothing had prepared her for this, for the way she felt now, lying beside Edward as the hearth burned low, munching on cold chicken, passing a brimming wine cup back and forth and laughing frequently.
She was not surprised that he’d given her such satisfaction. She was surprised, however, that he’d been so attentive after their lovemaking. He was, she soon discovered, much given to touching, playing with her hair, cupping a breast, rubbing his foot against the muscles of her calf. He asked her questions she’d not expected, questions about her childhood and her likes, her family, asked as if he were truly curious about the answers. He’d shouted with laughter when she artlessly confided that she’d prayed these ten days past to the Blessed Lady Mary that he’d not forget her. If the Virgin Mother had, indeed, taken heed of so dubious an appeal, Edward pointed out, she’d be performing a service more commonly assumed by the bawds who ran the Southwark bordellos. That was the most sacrilegious remark Jane had ever heard; it sent her into shocked giggles that did not subside until he kissed her again.
No, she most assuredly did not want to leave, would have given virtually everything she did own if only she had the right to lie beside him till dawn, to sleep and make love and sleep again. She knew, however, what was expected of her, knew that to presume would be to jeopardize any future she might have with him, be it for a week, a month, or however long his passion for her did last. She sat up reluctantly, began to search the floor for her discarded clothes.
Edward reached over, caught her arm. “Where do you go?”
“Home, Your Grace. It grows late and…”
He hesitated but briefly. “I’d have you stay the night,” he said, surprising himself somewhat by the offer; it was not one he made casually, preferring more often than not to have his bedmates depart once he’d had his pleasure with them.
She looked as if he’d just offered her the sun and moon. He began to laugh, pulled her back down beside him. “I did forget…. You’ve a husband, haven’t you? Will he be sorely vexed if you’re gone the night?”
The last person on her mind at that moment was her husband; had she been asked she’d have been hard put even to remember his name. She shook her head happily, lay back in Edward’s arms.
“What will you tell him, sweetheart?”
She considered, began to giggle. “The truth, of course, my liege. That I did pass the night in the service of my King!”
“I rather think,” he said, and smiled lazily at her, “that under the circumstances, you might call me Ned!”
Will stood in Edward’s bedchamber, watching as Edward was dressed by his esquires of the body. Servants were clearing away the evidence of an intimate late-night supper for two, and the bed had not yet been made up by the grooms of the chamber; it was still rumpled, warm. A gleam of gold caught Will’s eye; he reached under the pillow, retrieved a woman’s locket. It was a pretty piece of work, and he’d paid a London goldsmith a rather extravagant sum for it just a month ago, wanting it in time for Jane’s nameday.
“Shall I hold on to this and return it to her when next I do see her, Ned?” he asked, and took a certain pride in the fact that the question came so naturally to his lips, betrayed no more than the curiosity Edward would expect him to show.
“You needn’t bother, Will.” Edward, who was in a boisterously good mood, glanced over his shoulder to smile at Will. “She’ll be back tonight; I’ll see that she gets it then.”
“Twice in two nights,” Will said softly. “Did she please you as much as that?”
Edward laughed. “That’s a queer question, Will, coming from you! She’s the best I’ve had in a long while, as you damned well know! In truth, I should hold a grudge against you, keeping her to yourself as long as you did…hardly the act of a friend!”
Will listened in silence as Edward began to banter with John Howard’s son, Thomas, who’d been acting as a royal esquire of the body for some three years now. He couldn’t speak in front of Thomas and the other men milling about in the chamber. But he could ask Ned for a few moments alone. He could tell him the truth, that this woman was different from the others; this woman he did not want to share.
They were pulling over Edward’s shirt a magnificent crimson velvet doublet, elaborately stitched with gold thread, fumbling with the points that fastened his hose. Twice Will opened his mouth; twice he held his tongue. Only Gloucester was closer to Ned than he was. Ned had given him lands, offices, a barony. But he had never asked Ned for what Ned hadn’t first shown himself willing to give. What had it meant to Ned, after all, to give him lands confiscated from Lancastrian rebels? But Jane…Jane had been born knowing what most women never learned; Jane could fire a man’s blood and Ned hadn’t yet had his fill of her. Would Ned be willing to give her up merely because he asked it of him?
Once he could have asked this of Ned and felt confident that Ned would have done it for him. Now…now he was not so sure. Betrayals and exile and the bloody fields of Barnet and Tewkesbury had wrought changes in Ned. Since reclaiming his throne, he was far less patient with the foibles of others, was less generous, more inclined to command where once he might have suggested. Ned at nineteen would never have done what he’d done at twenty-nine, given the order that sent Harry of Lancaster beyond all earthly cares and concerns. Ned at twenty-two might have laughed at Will’s confession, have shrugged and looked elsewhere for his pleasure. But at thirty-two? Will didn’t know. He didn’t doubt that Ned cared for him. But he did doubt whether Ned would be willing to yield up Jane Shore until his own hunger for her had been sated.
The suspicion was an unsettling one, that Ned might put a passing lust before a friendship of thirteen years. But suspicions he could live with; certainty he could not. If Ned would not do that for him, he’d rather not know.
Will dropped the locket back onto the bed. Ned’s passions burned bright but not long; he tired of women rather quickly. Why should it be any different with Jane?
Edward generally preferred to keep his Christmas court at Westminster. This year, however, his primary concern was raising funds for his forthcoming war with France: Christmas Day found him in Coventry, and, shortly thereafter, he ventured as far north as Lincoln in his quest for benevolences and loans. It was mid-January before he returned to London. On the second night of his return, he sent
for Jane Shore, and frequently thereafter in the weeks that followed.
It was in the spring, as war fever swept the capital, that Will first marked the change in Jane. As April thawed and flowered, she began to find excuses for not seeing him. She shrugged off his queries with uncharacteristic evasiveness, and when they did share a bed, he found, too, a change in her physical responsiveness. She was no longer so eager for their lovemaking, seemed more indulgent than impassioned, at times indifferent even. Will was not burdened with a fool’s vanity, was well attuned to nuances and inference; he was not long in reaching the discomforting conclusion that she was acting more to accommodate his needs than to gratify her own, that she was tiring of him as he’d once hoped Edward would tire of her.
It was late. They’d lain in silence for some time. Normally, it would not have bothered Will all that much, that he’d been incapable of getting an erection; it didn’t happen often with him, and he knew, moreover, that there was not a man walking God’s earth who had not suffered the same lapse at one time or another. But that was normally; now he mentally cursed his body for beginning to thicken, for slowed reflexes, for no longer being twenty-five. This was the second time in a fortnight that he’d had this problem with Jane, and why in Christ’s Name must it be with Jane, of all women?
“Will?”
At sound of her voice, he turned toward it, said hurriedly, “I’m sorry, sweetheart. I guess I was more tired than I did realize….”
“Don’t be silly, Will. You know I don’t mind.”
That was just the trouble. He knew she didn’t. “It grows late. I’d best call for a servant to see you safe home.”
“No, I can stay the night. I told you, now that I am the mistress of the King, my husband does give me all the freedom I could wish. I need only tell him I was at Westminster and he’d never think to question me further.”
“Praise God for complacent husbands,” he murmured against her ear, and she laughed; as usual when she spoke of her husband, there was both affection and a certain low-key contempt in her voice.
The Sunne In Splendour: A Novel of Richard III Page 71