by Barbara Kyle
Adam pulled her out the door but she turned back, enthralled. “A poet.”
“…So the lass lost the head of her maiden.”
They found the cottage dreaming under the moonlight. Adam knocked on the door, and a woman in a neat cap and apron opened it, balancing a baby on her hip. Adam smiled and asked if he and his sister might break their journey for the night. “Ralph at the Boar’s Head said you might have two rooms.”
The woman glanced at the figure on horseback behind him in the dark. “A cold night to be a-journeying, sir. You’re right welcome. You’ll share a bed with my father, and your sister can share with my two little girls. If that suits, ’twill cost you six shillings. Comes with bread and small beer at dawn to break your fast.”
He thanked her gladly and beckoned Elizabeth. She dismounted without looking too much like a princess who had always had a groom to offer a step down from her saddle. He ushered her inside under the thatched roof that smelled familiarly of musty clover, like a stable. Following her in, he bent his head to go through the low doorway. The room was dim, but warm from the glowing peat fire in the hearth. They seemed to have interrupted the family at supper, for a scatter of people sat in a ragged semicircle before the hearth, four adults on stools with wooden trenchers of bread and sausage on their laps, five children on the floor spooning up bread in milk from wooden bowls.
A ruddy-faced man stepped forward, wiping his hands on his breeches. “Where are you bound, sir?”
“Chelmsford,” Adam said.
The man offered his hand. “Walter Bent.” He jerked his chin toward the woman who was taking Elizabeth’s cloak and showing her to the hearth. “My wife, Katherine.”
The ceiling was so low Adam’s fingers brushed its beam as he pulled off his cap. He shook the man’s hand. “The name’s Fitzroy. And we thank you for your hospitality, Master Bent.”
He was finding it hard not to guide Elizabeth and pull up a stool for her like the lady she was, but he could see that she was relieved just to stand before the fire and warm her hands. A thin young man got up from his stool and genially offered it to her, saying, “Sit you down, mistress.” She sat, stealing glances around at the cottage with barely hidden interest at its foreignness. The floor was beaten earth, the wattle-and-daub walls were whitewashed all over, and the room’s main furniture was a battered trestle table. There seemed to be just two rooms on this level, the common one and a kitchen at the rear, bisected by a staircase of five bare steps leading to a low-ceilinged upper floor. The room was smoky from the peat fire—Adam saw it was making Elizabeth’s eyes water—but everything was clean, the hearth well swept, the table scrubbed smooth and boasting a pair of wax candles, though unlit since wax was expensive. This was no rough laborer’s hut, but the home of an industrious yeoman, a farmer of some means.
“Will you and your sister sup with us, sir?” asked Bent.
“Thank you. I’ll see to the horses first.”
“There’s a byre. Only Kat’s cows there, so plenty of room. Just nudge Buttercup and Old Nut aside. Help yourself to oats for your horses. Willy, go show him.”
A boy of about ten sprang to his feet and Adam was about to go with him, but caught Elizabeth’s anxious look at the prospect of being left alone with the family. They won’t bite, he wanted to assure her. He said to the woman, “My sister would be glad of a little warm milk if you can spare it, mistress. The ride was cold.”
“With pleasure, sir,” she said as she laid her baby down in its cradle. “And a little honey in it, mistress? I warrant ’twill do you a world of good. Margaret, fetch some milk.” A little girl scampered into the kitchen.
Adam went out with young Willie, who told him all about a newborn foal as they led the horses around to the byre. The boy helped him unsaddle the horses, and then, using his hand, chopped the film of ice on the water in the trough and filled a bucket while Adam scooped out oats.
“Shall I brush them for you, sir?”
“Thank you, Willy.” He handed him a penny, which the boy eagerly pocketed, then he headed back to the cottage, not wanting to leave Elizabeth too long. When he walked in he was surprised to see her chatting happily in the midst of the family circle.
“Adam,” she said cheerfully, “this is Master Horner, who is Mistress Bent’s father.” A hunched and toothless old man nodded in Adam’s direction, though his milky eyes bespoke blindness. Adam said a respectful “Hello, sir,” and Elizabeth went on to introduce the others—an aunt Cecily and a son, Arthur—the young man who’d given her his stool—and his wife, Meg, who was heavily pregnant. “Arthur and Meg,” she reported with the pleasure of an insider, “plan to move into a cottage of their own in the spring.”
“Aye,” Bent said with some pride, “in the heart of the village. They would have moved in right after the wedding at Christmas, but a storm toppled an old oak on the place and broke its back.”
“We’ll have it mended by Easter,” said Arthur.
“Better have,” Meg said with a teasing nudge in his rib.
Adam, sitting down to join the circle, caught Elizabeth’s glance at Meg’s swollen belly as though calculating the wedding less than a month ago. She looked at him with obvious surprise at the family’s indifference to the situation. He shrugged with a smile that said Country people get on with life.
The lady of the house, who’d been busy at the hearth, handed Elizabeth a steaming bowl. “Here’s your warm milk. Fresh today. None gives better than Old Nut.”
Elizabeth looked delighted as she took it. “I thank you, mistress, with all my heart.”
“You have a fine property, sir,” Adam said as Bent handed him a tankard of ale. A shaggy sheepdog padded over to him and laid its head on his knee. Adam gave its ears an energetic scratch and the dog closed its eyes in bliss. “How many acres?”
“Speak that again,” the old man said suddenly.
Everyone looked at him. “Speak what, Grandfa’r?” Arthur asked.
“Not you. The young mistress. The traveller. Speak that again, what you just said.”
A few faces idly turned to Elizabeth, but others went back to their supper as though used to the old man’s oddities. But his demand made the hair stand up on the back of Adam’s neck. Before he could warn Elizabeth, she replied as though it were some parlor game she was eager to join, “I will right gladly, sir, if you will remind me what I said. Are we to make a rhyme of it?”
“It’s her!” he declared. “The child of Old King Harry. The young princess.”
Mistress Bent frowned at him. “Don’t talk daft, Father. Here, have some ale.”
But the old man was struggling to his feet. “I’ll never forget that voice.” He looked in Elizabeth’s direction, his fingers groping blindly as though to touch a mirage. “I was on the road to St. Alban’s, me and my wife, the Lord rest her, when you came to London. Eleven year ago it was, come Lent. A hundred men or more rode with you. Least, that’s what the road shook like, for I heard their horses and choked on their dust. But you stopped them all to speak to a housewife who’d run out with flowers, calling for you to take her bouquet. People thronged from every door and lane, but I was near you and I heard you sweetly tell that housewife, ‘I thank you, mistress, with all my heart.’ And the people cheered ‘God bless the lady Elizabeth,’ and my good wife, Lord rest her, said you were the bonniest maid she’d ever seen. ‘I thank you, mistress, with all my heart,’ that’s what you said. Lord bless us, I’ll never forget it, not as long as I live.” He bowed low to her. “Your Grace.”
The room went silent. They all stared at Elizabeth. Even the children, who caught the change in their parents and gazed up, expectant, in wonder. Elizabeth looked like a frightened doe seeing hunters in the bracken. It went straight to Adam’s heart. The chance to dissemble was lost.
Warily, with heart pounding, he stood. “Your memory serves you well, sir, where sight cannot. And, just as you heard true majesty in my lady’s voice, I hear loyalty in yours. Please, tell
me I am not deceived.”
In the silence the old man said stoutly, “Need you ask, sir?” He bowed again. “I am Her Grace’s faithful servant.”
Elizabeth looked at him, her chin trembling. “I am heartily grateful, good sir.”
Bent slowly got to his feet in awe, his eyes never leaving Elizabeth. His wife stood up as well, equally dumbstruck. They shuffled back a step or two, as though aware they must not stand so close to royalty. The aunt and the son and his wife followed. Then the children. Elizabeth was left sitting all alone. The whole family, gaping at her, seemed frozen.
It sent a chill up Adam’s spine. Could he really trust these people? Elizabeth’s life, and his, lay in their hands. But something struck him. Their utter lack of fear. There was no shrinking and quaking. They looked at Elizabeth as extraordinary, golden, perhaps even closer to God, but still a fellow creature who had eaten bread with them, warmed her hands at their fire, laughed with them. She was special, but she was theirs.
“Good people,” he said, “you have shown us great kindness this night. I must now ask even more of you—that you keep my lady’s presence here unknown. The stakes are no less than life and death. Will you take pity and gift her with your silence?”
Slowly, they all nodded. Tears of relief glistened in Elizabeth’s eyes. She insisted that they all sit down again and finish their supper. Slowly, they took their stools, moving them back a little way from her, and sat.
In the silence, a horse outside whinnied.
Then little Margaret whispered to her mother, “If she’s a princess where’s her crown?”
That brought a tense laugh from some. Then a wave of giggles. Then peals of knee-slapping laughter. Adam grinned at Elizabeth. She beamed back at him. She was safe.
But Mistress Bent insisted on one essential alteration. The princess must be given her own, private room.
Late that night Adam bedded down in the byre. At first he’d been crammed into the common room with the old man and four small children, all of them displaced by the royal personage given an entire room in grand isolation. The dog, too, had joined the crowd, curling up at Adam’s side. After an hour of the old fellow’s snoring, and the grunts and sighs of the children, who squirmed endlessly in their sleep, and the dog’s breath in his face, he’d decided to stake out a quieter spot, and headed outside to the byre. He had created a makeshift bed in the straw of Bent’s wagon, beside the horses and cows.
It was damn cold. And stank of cow dung. And there was a jagged hole in the roof as big as a saddle, where the frigid air swept in, making him wish he had more of a blanket than his cloak. But there was plenty of room to stretch out, and as he lay back in the straw, arms folded under his head, and stared at the stars that winked at him through the hole, he felt that this had been the happiest day of his life. He and Elizabeth had made such good progress he reckoned they would reach his ship in Colchester by midday tomorrow and then, with any luck, catch the late afternoon tide. With her on his mind, it took a long time to fall asleep.
The horses’ nickering woke him. A shape slid by in the dark. Adam shook his head to clear it of sleep. Moonlight silvered the rough wooden walls. A scuffling sound. Someone was in the byre. “Who’s there?”
“I’m sorry. I woke you.” It was Elizabeth.
He hopped off the end of the wagon. “Are you all right?”
She stood beside one of the horses. She bit her lip as though unsure. “My whole life I’ve had people around me. Servants. My ladies, sleeping in my chamber. I’ve never been…all alone.”
The catch in her voice tugged at his heart. He came close to her. “You’re not alone. You have me.”
“Yes. But for how long?”
“As long as you need me.”
She looked up at him and her pale face seemed to glow in the moonlight. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, the ends kissing the drawstring of the chemise that peeked above her breasts. He tried not to imagine untying the drawstring. She shivered. She had come out without her cloak.
“You’re cold,” he said. He grabbed his cloak from the wagon and whirled it around her shoulders, then reached for the saddlebag on a peg beside her and pulled out a flask and opened it. “Here.”
“What is it?”
“Go ahead. To warm you.”
She took it, her fingers brushing his, and took a swallow. She smiled. “Brandy.”
Her fingers felt so cold he took her hand in both of his and rubbed it.
“You’re no better,” she said. “Cold as ice. Here,” she said, offering the brandy.
He knocked back a swallow, though he didn’t need it. He was burning up, wanting her.
“I’ll tell you how we can both get warm,” he said, tucking the flask back in the saddlebag, eager to have both hands free to rub hers again. “Forget France—it’s just as freezing there. I’ll sail you to the Indies. To the Spanish Main, where the sun shines every day and the flower petals stay forever warm. The sand of the beaches is hot and soft, like new-baked bread, and the water’s as warm as melted butter.”
She laughed. “You sound hungry.”
He noticed something glint at her throat. A thin gold chain around her neck. “What’s this?” he asked in a mock scolding. “You managed to sneak out some jewelry?” He had insisted she leave it all behind, for if anyone searched them the jewels would betray her identity.
She seemed to blush, though he couldn’t be sure in the dark. She tugged up the chain from its hiding place between her breasts and Adam was surprised at what hung at the end of it. His captain’s whistle of carved horn. The one she’d asked him to give her on the day she’d agreed to invest in his ship.
“When I was little,” she said, fondling the whistle, “my father had a whistle such as this made for him, but of pure gold. He loved to stride up and down the decks of his flagship, the Great Harry, playing admiral.” She looked up at him. “He kept it for sport. I keep this to remember you. I wear it always.”
He felt too much to speak.
He kissed her. She didn’t stop him. He kissed her again, harder. Her lips tasted sweet, of brandy. She still held the whistle, her bent arm a barrier between them, and he took the whistle, warm from her body, and let it fall on its chain inside her chemise.
He nudged the loose cloak off her shoulders and it fell to the floor. He unfastened a tie at the front of her dress. She let him. He untied two more. She helped. He tugged loose the chemise drawstring and kissed her skin beneath it, then pulled the chemise down over her shoulders, exposing her, and she took a sharp breath of surprise as his hands smoothed over her bare breasts. Her skin felt burning hot against his cold hands, her nipples as hard as holly berries. His need burned so hard he pressed her back against the horse’s side, forcing her to splay her arms wide, leaving her breathless as he kissed her mouth, her throat, her shoulder, the inside of her elbow, thrilling to the feel of her, the taste of her.
Catching her breath, she fumbled to unfasten the ties of his doublet. He wrenched off the doublet, tossing it to the ground, and her hands slipped up under his shirt, her cool fingers on his chest firing his hot skin.
He pulled off his shirt, then lifted her up by the waist and set her down on the back of the wagon. He jumped up beside her and they sat shivering together, breathless together, burning together. He took her face between his hands and kissed her, and she thrust her fingers into his hair, kissing him back. He lowered her onto the wagon’s bed of straw and slipped his hand up under her skirt, and heard her gasp as he ran his palm up her outer thigh, her skin so thrillingly smooth and warm. He bent his head and kissed her knee and shoved the skirt higher and glimpsed the triangle thatch between her thighs, a flash of flame in the moonlight. He undid the ties of his codpiece fast, gazing at the glory of her, and she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. He ran his tongue over her navel and squeezed her thigh, his senses aflame with the melding of opposites—cold air and hot skin, his hardness and her yielding softness. His breaths were
ragged, his need overpowering. But her legs were tight together. Was this her limit?
She pulled back her head to look at him. “I’ve never—”
“I know.” The yearning in her eyes was shadowed, hesitant, unsure. But above all, yearning—and he took that as his answer. He smoothed her hair back from her forehead, his other hand still on her thigh, and whispered, “Open your mouth.”
She did. And when his tongue found hers he felt her thighs loosen. She moaned and pulled him down again and held him, the whistle between her breasts caught between their bodies. Gently, he spread her legs with his knee. Slowly, he entered her, holding back, which took all of his might, until she was ready to take all of him. She gripped his back, and pulled him to her, and he thrust into her with a need more fierce than he had ever known. She arched. She cried out at her climax. He held her so tightly as he spilled his seed, the whistle dug into the wound on his chest.
They lay there, catching their breath, she still holding him tight.
Adam felt snowflakes kiss his bare back. He rolled over. Clouds had drifted in, masking the stars. In the waning moonlight he could see the shadow of blood on the inside of Elizabeth’s thigh. And a small smear of blood on his chest from his abraded wound. And the look of wonder on her face.
He kissed her. A lingering, loving kiss. It was the happiest day of his life.
Clouds as gray as armor marched across the gunmetal sky, and the sea heaved up steel-colored swells as if to meet it in a counterattack. But the wind, strong and steady from the northwest, was all Adam could ask for. It swept over the Elizabeth’s quarter, filling her sails and snapping her flags as if to salute her namesake, on board for the voyage to France. Standing at the wheel, Adam looked over his shoulder at her.
She stood with her back to him, gazing over the stern rail at England’s coast. With this wind, he thought, they’d soon be out of sight of land. He was glad. He didn’t want her to dwell on everything she was leaving.
He was glad of much more than that. He felt brimful of gladness. To have her here with him, on his ship. To be carrying her to safety. To know that she was his, and might still be his in whatever quiet life of exile awaited her in France. Her royal state might well dwindle once she was in exile. Dwindle and even expire. Why could he not hope, then, that one day she might be his forever? The thought rippled happiness through him, like the flags cheerfully snapping overhead. If he were any happier he’d have to dance a jig.