Destiny's Pawn

by Mary Daheim

  The arms that grabbed her from behind twisted her right wrist until the dagger fell. It clattered harmlessly to the floor as Morgan gasped for air. No sound came out of her throat, though she continued to thrash her arms and legs. Then the hands lifted her off the ground and she was swung high into the air. I’m going to die, she thought wildly, I’m going to die! She closed her eyes tight.

  And suddenly she became aware that someone was talking to her, half-angrily, half-humorously, someone with a voice that was very familiar. She opened her eyes slowly, realizing that her head was against her captor’s shoulder. She craned her neck, peering into the dimness, and then the face and voice became instantly recognizable.

  “Francis!” She goggled at him and was both relieved and furious. “What… ?”

  He was laughing so hard, in his low rumbling laugh, that he could scarcely hold on to her. “Oh, God! I’ve got to put you down!” He settled her into an armchair and collapsed on the floor next to her. He could hardly speak for laughing. “You were … so … funny!” He finally got the words out.

  “Funny!” Morgan shrieked at him, trembling from fury and relief. “Funny! Oh!” She was at him with her hands, grabbing at his hair. “I’ll make you bald for that!” she yelled.

  He grabbed her wrists tight and pushed her back into the chair. “Stop that!” he ordered, finally overcoming his mirth. “Will you let me explain?”

  “You’d better,” she said between clenched teeth, eyes wild.

  He settled himself back on the floor, his hands gripping his knees. “I live at Woodstock now.” Morgan nodded impatiently. “I’ve been helping John Leland, who has been scouring all England to compile works for the King’s new library at Whitehall. I remembered you telling me about your father’s wondrous collection of books and old charts. I was going to write and ask permission to look at them but”—and he looked at her with his sardonic gaze—“I hesitated to disturb you in your new pleasures. I came here one evening, found Arthur down by the well, and told him who I was and what I wanted. I said—since I hadn’t written you—that I would appreciate it if he would keep my visits to himself. I give him a few coins from time to time, and he makes sure the door by the trellis is always open.”

  Explanation or not, she was still in a rage. “You bribed my servant to get into my house to go through my father’s possessions! You are the most contemptible person I’ve ever met!” She saw he was watching not her eyes or her face, but was staring openly and almost indifferently at her bosom. She looked down and saw her dressing gown open, her nightdress pulled away to reveal almost all of her breasts. She yanked the dressing gown across her chest and blushed furiously.

  “I have seen your breasts before,” Francis drawled. “Or have you forgotten?”

  She jumped up. “Wretched churl! You should have stayed in the North with the rest of the Philistines! You ….” Sounds in the passageway made her stop.

  They both turned as light began to fill the corridor. Francis, with Morgan following him, went to the door and looked out: The servants, led by Hal and Donald, were advancing tremulously down the hall, armed with more pikestaffs, swords, daggers, and even a pitchfork. A most disturbed-looking Arthur was doddering at Hal’s side.

  The sight of them set Francis to laughing again, and this time Morgan laughed, too. The little brigade, squeezed in between the walls, stopped and stared at their mistress and the tall, blond stranger beside her. Arthur looked decidedly disconcerted as his glance passed between Morgan and Francis and back again.

  Hal was the first to speak, his words hampered by a stammer: “We were s-so t-terrified. We th-thought the g-ghost had attacked you, m-my lady!”

  Morgan smiled at his consternation. “Well, if he had,” she said dryly, “I would have been a ghost myself by now.” Hal stared down at his bare feet. “We th-thought we needed … more help. It … it took us awhile to get our arms together … and our courage together again, my lady.”

  Morgan went up to him and put her hand on his broad shoulder. “You are to be commended for coming back at all. As for ghosts, perhaps Arthur can explain.” She gave Arthur a firm but not unaffectionate look. “Go back downstairs, all of you, and try to calm the womenfolk.”

  They trooped off obediently, their weapons clattering on the stairway. As she turned back toward the room, Morgan saw what she had attacked—Francis’s cloak, hung on a peg by the door. She could also see now that there was a blanket over the window so that Francis’s candle could not be seen from outside. Morgan waved her hand in the direction of the charts and books piled on a table by the window. “You want these things?” Her anger had subsided now.

  Francis furrowed his brow at her. “You’d give them to me?”

  She shrugged. “They aren’t doing any good just collecting dust. Except for the ghosts, of course.” A little smile tugged at her mouth.

  Francis smiled back, his familiar, sardonic smile. He was clean-shaven again and he had put on some weight. “And I thought I would cause less trouble by coming here unknown.”

  Morgan bent down and picked up her father’s dagger. She tucked it into the folds of her dressing gown and looked up at Francis. “You are daft, Francis.” She started out of the little room. “Don’t you know you have never been light treaded?”

  He snorted. “Indeed,” he said, and began to gather together the books and rolled-up naval charts. His voice had made her pause. “You are wed again, I hear. But not to Seymour. What happened?”

  She turned and faced him with a glacial expression. “What does it matter to you?”

  He shrugged, but there was tension in his tall frame. “Obviously, it should not. I’m just curious about the course your heart takes. A year ago, you were hell-bent on having Seymour. Now you are Lady Griffin. But of course this time you finally found true love.”

  The sarcasm riled Morgan visibly. “I found a man who wanted to marry me and take care of me. An attractive, charming man, too, with wit and flair. We are very happy.”

  “Assuredly.” Francis bent down to pick up a piece of parchment that had fallen from the desk. “I assume he is a good stepfather. I do, after all, have a stake in how my son is raised.”

  Morgan had given little thought to how Francis might react to having a man other than his own brother take on the responsibility of being a father to Robbie. It had been so long since her children had had any real father at all, and while Richard did not spend a great deal of time with her young ones, his presence added a much-needed figure of masculine authority.

  “He is kind and good-humored with all the children,” she said in a voice that sounded defensive. “Naturally, since he has never had young ones of his own, being a father is new to him.”

  Francis raised a sandy eyebrow. “So it is. He had no children by his first wife. Nor, now that I think of it, do I recall ever having heard of him siring bastards.” He paused and let his eyes move down the sheet of parchment, apparently absorbed in what had been inscribed so many years ago. Morgan watched him with curiosity, suddenly aware that she had grown quite chilly in her nightclothes and bare feet.

  At last he looked up. “I had considered making love to you. I think I will not. It occurs to me that your handsome Richard may be incapable of giving you babes. If I were to get you with child, there could be no greater irony than to see my own son supplanted by his brother. Or sister,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

  “You blackguard!” Morgan shouted, and immediately lowered her voice lest the servants hear her. “Does it ever occur to you that I don’t want you to touch me? Did you ever think Margaret was barren? Or that Richard is very discreet about his illegitimate offspring?”

  “Or that pigs fly?” Francis rolled up the parchment and stashed it among a dozen other rolls in an ancient oak cask. “Now begone, it’s nigh on to midnight and I have at least an hour’s work to do before I ride to Woodstock.”

  Morgan wanted to make a stinging retort, to have the last word and phrase it so that Francis
could not mistake her contempt for his arrogant, arbitrary behavior. But he was scratching away with his quill, acting as if she had already left the room. Still she hesitated as a small voice from somewhere deep inside asked a compelling question: Why do you wait? So that he will change his mind and fling himself upon you? Nonsense, Morgan told herself; as much as she missed Richard and his lovemaking, she scarcely needed impassioned consolation from Francis. Noiselessly, she turned on her heel and left the room.

  But she did not go back to sleep that night. Some time after one o’clock she heard the sound of Francis’s horse trotting down the drive of Faux Hall. Morgan sighed with annoyance at the mere thought of her brother-in-law’s brazen intrusion into her old home—and his equally brazen words with her. He must be wrong about Richard. Margaret obviously had not been a healthy woman. And while Morgan had wondered why she didn’t become pregnant during the first six months of their marriage, she assumed it was her fault, since she was older now and had lost the last babe she had carried. Nor did her unfruitful state perturb her a great deal; she would like to give Richard a son and heir, but he did not seem obsessed with the idea as were most men. It was unusual, she had to admit, but then her own father had never appeared overly disappointed because he had only sired a daughter.

  She turned over and sighed again. Damn Francis, he certainly could stir up her emotions. That blunt attitude, the total candor, the probing questions—not even Tom had ever spoken so frankly to her. Why, she demanded of herself, did she permit Francis to behave so outrageously in word and deed? And why in God’s name had she hesitated while he turned back to his work in the recesses of the attic?

  Because I want him, came that relentless voice once more. Because I have always wanted him. Because I can talk to him, as he can talk to me. Because I love him and always have, perhaps from that first time out there in the orchard.

  Morgan sat up, her fist rubbing at the place between her eyebrows. Who was really talking to her, her own conscience—or Grandmother Isabeau? Her grandmother’s presence seemed to hover in the house, as unsettling as any ghost the servants had conjured up. But not frightening—no, comforting, loving—and knowing.

  And Grandmother Isabeau had known, even if Morgan had not. Why did I not? she asked herself. Grandmother had warned her that love could be deluding. But Morgan didn’t want to know, she couldn’t know, not when she thought she loved Sean, not when she was going to marry Francis’s brother, not when Francis already had a loving wife, not while she took the heady plunge into passion with Tom Seymour, not while she thought Tom had broken her heart and she needed the balm of a new marriage to ease the pain. And not when she believed that her love could never be returned by Francis. For she was convinced that he did not love her. He had never professed his feelings. He had merely stated that they were well mated in the physical sense. He had loved Lucy deeply. And certainly there was no hint of romance or sentiment in his rough wooing of Morgan’s body.

  Morgan slapped at the counterpane in anger and frustration. She couldn’t possibly love Francis, wretched boor that he was. It was just that she and Richard had been separated too long, that finding Francis instead of an ethereal spectre had been a shock, that she was undone by being in her old home without her loved ones. To think that she loved Francis! She shook her head several times, as if to rid her brain of such a foolish notion. Of course she did not love him and never had—nor, she told herself, did he love her.

  Morgan and the children arrived in London after dark the following night, settling themselves into their rooms at Whitehall. Morgan sought out Wriothesley, the new chancellor, and badgered him for news of the war. He had not heard much in the last few days, he admitted, save that Boulogne was still the primary objective of the King’s drive into France.

  A week after Morgan returned to court, Richard’s second letter arrived. He had news of victory, which had already been rumored about the city.

  “Our forces threw wild fire into Boulogne, right in the midst of a thunderstorm. A week to the day later I stood beside the King and Surrey and we watched as the castle fell. I have never seen His Grace so pleased or elated. Perhaps my earldom is at hand.”

  Morgan smiled at the single sheet of paper. He had closed by saying that soon they would be in each other’s arms, making up for the lost weeks while he had been away.

  For all of Henry Tudor’s matrimonial misadventures, his suppression of the old faith, his persecutions and executions, he was still “Bluff King Hal” to his people. Riding in triumph through the streets of London, he waved to the crowds, his great bulk swaying precariously atop the splendidly caparisoned horse. A few yards behind the King rode Richard Griffin, a set smile on his tanned face.

  Morgan was waiting at Whitehall. She had heard that Richard would be among those returning with the King. As the procession moved through the gates, she leaned from the balcony, trying to find her husband among the victorious warriors.

  “There!” cried Mary Howard, the widowed Duchess of Richmond. “See him, in the bright green!”

  Morgan peered down among the men until her eye caught the brilliant color of Richard’s doublet. At that moment, he looked up and waved at her. She waved back, beaming, then left the balcony and raced downstairs to meet him.

  She was lying naked in his arms as his hand caressed the length of her hip and thigh. They had been making love for over an hour and were both replete. But in spite of her joy at being reunited with Richard, Morgan sensed that he was troubled. She knew he had not yet been granted his earldom; if he had, he would have told her at once.

  “You are disturbed, my husband,” she ventured, trying to read his face in the dim light. “Do you want to tell me why?”

  The mocking smile, with a touch of bitterness, came to his face. “My earldom appears to be not forthcoming,” he said, and the smile faded as he lay back on the pillow. “The King already rewarded several others after the capture of Boulogne but I was not among them. He still considers me a Howard, and for all that Norfolk and Surrey and myself are deemed fit to fight his wars, Henry will not repay us in kind.”

  Morgan put her arm across his chest, her head against his shoulder. “Don’t fret, dear heart. In time, I am sure, he will recognize you for what you are—not a Howard by birth but one of his loyal men.”

  Richard sighed. “Perhaps,” he said, but his tone displayed no conviction. Then he laughed and tickled her side. “I’m turning as grumpy as Bishop Gardiner these days. Just being in France must sour a Welshman’s good humor.”

  “Nonsense,” said Morgan, though she knew it was true. He was older, of course, and he had more responsibilities now with her and the children—that was undoubtedly why he was less exuberant, less animated. Having reassured herself for the time being, Morgan slept. But Richard remained awake for a long while, staring up at the canopy over their bed.

  Chapter 23

  The new year of 1545 brought still more wrangling between Henry and the Emperor. Charles was suing for perpetual peace, but Henry wanted none of it. In the North, the Scots were again talking the field with the added threat of an alliance with France. And on the seas, the danger of a French invasion menaced the English coast.

  Morgan knew that Tom was stationed at Dover, guarding the Channel. Officially now one of the Queen’s ladies, Morgan watched Cat Parr’s face closely whenever news of the navy was reported. Cat would force her face to keep composed, her voice to show interest—but nothing more. Yet for all the Queen’s discretion, Morgan could see a glint of fear in the other woman’s eyes whenever Tom’s name was mentioned. She still loves him, Morgan thought. But do I? Or did I ever really love him? Or did I only need him at that time, in a way that I have never needed anyone so desperately before or since?

  But now she had convinced herself Richard was all she needed. Sometimes it seemed as if the slightest touch across the supper table, a glimpse of her silk-stockinged legs as she lifted her skirts to climb the stairs, or even a glance during a pause in their co
nversation was sufficient to sweep them both into a flare of mutual passion. Occasionally, he would chide her for the years of pleasure she had denied them.

  “I’d have been but a meek young girl,” she told him once as he covered her breasts with strands of her long, tawny hair. “You would have tired of me quickly.”

  “Not so,” he responded, smiling at her shiver of excitement. “I would have taught you all you would have needed to hold me. Yet,” he added, the smile fading slightly as her hands stroked his body, “I often marvel that you learned so much so well from that stick, James.”

  Morgan abruptly jerked her knees up, catching Richard off-balance and sending him sprawling on his back. She fell on top of him, burying her face in the hollow of his neck. Her aggressive ardor delighted him; he had no idea that she couldn’t let him see the expression on her face, lest he read more than she would have him know.

  The following month Richard accompanied Henry and a contingent of nobles to Portsmouth, where the King dined aboard the fleet’s flagship. They were draining their wine goblets when a lookout excitedly reported that French ships were on the horizon. Certain that the time for invasion had come, the King and his party hurriedly made for shore. They watched from the beach as the French fleet maneuvered menacingly, but came no farther.

  Henry smiled with self-confidence. “Craven French!” he cried, beaming so widely that his little eyes were all but hidden in the folds of his face.

  And then disaster struck. A sharp breeze had come up, and as the Mary Rose, named for Henry’s sister, started to turn with the wind, she took on water through the open gunwales and sank. Over four hundred men, including the vice admiral of the fleet, Sir George Carew, were drowned. Had it been other than the flagship—and one named for a Tudor princess at that—the loss might not have caused such tribulation. But the country’s dependence on its fleet was such that the news rocked London, even though the calamity was a worse blow to morale than it was to English naval strength.