Jeane Westin

by The Virgin's Daughters (v5)

  “Mary, there is no stopping them. The scavengers swarm.”

  She had to test John’s changed nature one last time. “Will you follow the others north to King James?”

  “Only if that is your direction. I cannot blot from memory her goodness to me. It has rooted my love for her as for no other monarch.” He kissed her forehead. “And, sweetheart, it is well past time that we began our life together. Did she give us her blessing?”

  “Yes, she did in her own way, even if she was unable to say she’d changed her mind.”

  He looked down into her face, wanting one answer. “You won’t miss the court and all its pleasures?”

  “Will you allow me time to miss anything?” she said boldly.

  He grinned. “Two horses will be saddled and waiting by the south gate at dawn.”

  They rode south and west to the slow tolling of bells in the distance, villagers and farmers in their fields running toward them calling, “Is our good Queen Bess gone?”

  “Aye, this early morn,” they cried a dozen times, their hearts saddened anew at each telling of the queen’s reluctant leave-taking.

  They rode on with the pale winter sun rising higher behind them over the smoke from cottage chimneys, the bells pealing dolefully from parish spire to spire as the sad news spread. Dazed villagers, even those in their older age, had known no other sovereign, and no man alive had known other than a Tudor monarch. “Will it be the Scotsman?” they called, many remembering when the Scots were their mortal enemies.

  John answered the first questioners, but soon gave it up to make progress along the dusty road. He knew where he was going.

  Just past midmorning as the dinner hour approached, Mary sagged in her saddle. “I am sorry, John. I am undone by the care and worry of the last days.”

  John rode close, his leg touching hers. “Just a few furlongs now, Mary, and we will rest until you are strong again.”

  They stopped at the Blue Boar Inn, the courtyard bustling with stable hands. Squawking chickens, having laid their morning eggs at first light, ran between the horses’ hooves. John dismounted and helped Mary slide from her saddle, and she wilted into his arms.

  The innkeeper appeared at his door. “Welcome again, Sir Harington,” he said. “I did not expect your return so soon. Feed, water and fresh hay for these horses,” he ordered, handing the reins to waiting hostlers. “This way, Lady Harington,” he added, bowing low.

  Mary flushed. She was not John’s lady yet. They would have to reach his estate, post banns and have them read out over three Sundays. It might be over a month before she was Lady Harington. Still, she delighted in the sound of it, not that she hadn’t thought it, hadn’t tried it on her tongue and with her pen many times.

  John helped her to a table with a tall-backed settle in front of the fire. “Innkeeper,” he called, “some hot spiced hippocras for my lady here. And a little of her favorite sharp farm cheese and fresh bread.”

  Leaning her head against the settle, Mary closed her eyes and thought that John could wait for her no longer, nor could she wait for him. He sat close beside her, and when the wine came, he held the cup to her lips, then broke off cheese and bread, feeding small pieces to her, and she allowed it, loving the way he had care of her.

  “You are treating me as a babe,” she said weakly. When she looked up at him, she feared that her eyes were red-rimmed, and her cheeks, now washed clear of white paint and red cochineal, must have no bloom. She raised her hand to touch her face.

  “Mary, my sweet, you are all sleepy loveliness. I want you always a fresh young maid just as you are.”

  She laughed softly. “Surely not always a maid, John.” Still, if he could read her mind so easily, she must guard her thoughts from such a future husband, especially the thought that kept returning where she imagined their first bedding. Mary looked at him to see how much he now guessed. He was laughing and calling out to the innkeeper.

  “Master Innkeeper, we would have your best clean room, with fresh bed linen, a ewer of rose water for washing and ale for drink. And later, much later, a hot meat pie for our supper.”

  At that the innkeeper called for his wife and a maid, rushing away with John calling after him: “And one more thing . . . we wish you and your good wife to witness our handfasting.”

  The innkeeper broke into a run.

  Mary gripped John’s sleeve. “You would keep me an honest woman, when I have shamelessly run away with you?”

  “We won Elizabeth’s approval. I think Sir William looks down and longs for a grandchild even now . . . as do I long for an heir.”

  “Hold, sir,” she teased, wondering that she could jest so near to exhaustion. “You take your manly prowess as a surety.”

  He laughed loud this time, sounding merrier than she could remember, sounding indeed very much like the carefree man she had first seen at Elizabeth’s throne with Essex in the presence chamber that first day at court so long ago. “You have forgotten one thing, John.”

  “Have I?”

  “The groom’s gift to the wife to make legal the handfasting.” She shrugged, dismissing her own words to assure him that gifts meant nothing to her.

  He slipped two fingers into his purse and drew out a gold ring made of three intertwined circles, which he laid before her on the trestle. He traced round the circles with his forefinger one at a time. “Head,” he said at the first circle, then, “heart and hand. I have carried this on my person since within a month of first seeing you.”

  “John, so long as that?”

  “Aye, if we could not marry, I planned to give it to you on a gold chain.” He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand, his eyes on her, serious now. “I will yet buy a gold chain to tie you to me.”

  She leaned into him, closed her eyes and searched along his cheek with her lips until she felt his mouth close about hers. He responded briefly, shifting uncomfortably on the settle. “John, sweet John,” she breathed, “don’t you know that I am tied to you with stronger bonds than any chain of gold?”

  The innkeeper and his wife approached and John rose, handing Mary to her feet. “I will know very soon, sweetheart.”

  Their hands held fast, they stood before the innkeeper and his wife.

  “I, John Harington, knight, do swear,” John said, slipping the three-circle ring on her finger, “and plight my faith and troth to join with this woman, Mary Rogers, spinster, in holy matrimony as soon as may be. Before you all as witnesses, I swear this on my oath. This is my legal commitment by the laws of Church and England.”

  With her waning energy, Mary, very much aware of the new golden weight on her marriage finger, repeated the pledge, looking into John’s eyes, aware of no other in the inn.

  When she finished, a cheer rose from ale maids, stable hands and a farmer, his scythe at his side, drinking his morning ale at the fireside table they’d vacated, his wet clothes steaming. Scooping Mary up and cradling her against his chest, John walked to the stairs and started up, evoking a new cheer from those looking up at them, their happy faces reflecting what they saw and what they remembered.

  “You are committed now, Sir John,” she said for his ear alone. “What do the old wives say? Marry in haste . . .”

  “Repent never,” he finished the ancient warning his way.

  He kicked open the first door off its latch and walked into a sunny loft room, crushing sweet herbs under his feet. Carrying Mary to the bed, he laid her gently upon the mattress, releasing the scent of lavender mixed into the straw and horse hair that filled the bed sack.

  The sheets were rough linen, but she did not feel their prickles for the sense of John’s hand unlacing her stomacher and releasing her gown.

  He sat down and dropped his boots, the double thumps raising a faint cheer from below. He tossed his doublet after the boots and stretched out his body without quite touching her, except for closing his hand about hers. “Sleep now, Mary. You need rest.”

  “But, John . . .”


  “Ah, wife, you must learn to obey.” He turned his head to look into her eyes. “What do the old husbands say? Women and horses must be well governed.”

  “I doubt you will ever be an old husband, John.”

  “At this moment, I doubt it, too,” he said, watching her lovely dark hair spread upon the pillow, her perfect face in profile, until her eyes drooped and closed and her deep breathing told him she was at rest. Finally, still wondering at his ability to wait yet more hours, the control of desire taking the last of his strength, though the best of it, he knew, John slept beside her.

  Mary dreamed long and woke when the westering sun sent long shadows reaching well into the room. For a moment, she did not see the usual sights of the ladies’ chamber at Richmond or hear Her Majesty calling for her bitter ale.

  John sat by the fireplace in his shirt, his bare legs stretched before him, watching, waiting, smiling.

  “John,” she whispered, remembering their handfasting, drowning in delight. “Why are you smiling?”

  “I cannot rule my mouth.”

  He rose and came to her, and she saw that his finely muscled legs were improved even over her imagination. He loves me. She was his by English law and more his by the ancient laws of Eden’s paradise.

  “You have bold eyes, Lady Harington,” he said, and the name did not make her blush.

  “And you have no codpiece, Sir John,” she said, wondering at her own daring. She watched his dearest face bend to the bed, his hand untying her shift at the shoulders, slipping it down beneath her yielding body, following its path with his mouth, barely touching her skin. Finally, he removed her garters and unrolled her hose, his lips trailing their descent. Enveloping warmth followed him wherever his lips hovered or touched as light as an April breeze. Mary wanted to beg for their swifter descent, but her throat was too full, moaning her own need.

  She was wholly exposed and yet felt never more protected. “Husband.” The word filled her with its meaning. He was hers forever. Instead of the cold horror she had anticipated in Lord Howard’s bed, this would be . . . well, as unlike that hell as a new paradise. She could only guess at how much.

  Mary watched as he quickly pulled his shirt over his head, exposing the place below his neck where the sun had not touched. His strong arms and shoulders that had held lance and sword now reached for her. He had been sculpted by some ancient hand and . . . He loves me. The words sang in her head as he stood looking down at her for what seemed a long infinity. His gaze took the path his lips had explored earlier.

  Her nipples rose up to meet his as he lay down urgently atop her, their lips meeting with a kiss that fed their hunger as nothing before.

  Carefully, he lifted her and entered, pushing slowly, until he met her maidenhead. He hesitated.

  “John, now!” It was a desperate plea, a hot command, rising to a gasp.

  He pushed through quickly to drown her moment’s pain in the molten flood that followed. It was nothing she would not endure a thousand times. She had loved him from the first moment; even her pretend hate on hearing of the wager with Essex had been a kind of reluctant desire. “John . . . John . . .” She could not stop saying his name, inhaling it, owning it.

  His eyes opened wide at that moment of releasing his love into her, of becoming one life, one future, one family. All waiting was done and he collapsed against her, drowning in the swollen fullness of her breasts and her cry of pleasure echoing through the small room and back to them again.

  At her instant of complete surrender, Mary felt what she had only imagined before: John against her unclothed, kissing her, his weight strengthening her. He was the most powerful and the best of men. She would always feel it into time without end. “My heart,” she whispered, clasping him closer still, beginning to believe at last that he was real and not a lonely night’s dream of love.

  Later, they lay side by side holding each other in the darkening room, the fireplace needing to be fed.

  Mary leaned down and kissed the puckered red scar on his chest where Essex’s sword had so narrowly missed John’s heart . . . and her own. “For so long, I pretended to ignore you, but I saw every time you took breath.”

  “And I pretended to wait patiently, when every second I was impatient and jealous of my godmother.”

  “John, no more pretending.”

  “No, my heart, no more.”

  She sighed, her body trembling with joy and release.

  He mistook the shiver and reached to cover them both with her shift until they were enveloped in lace and Bruges satin.

  “I’m not cold,” she said. “I was thinking of the queen.”

  John put up a finger to stop her speech.

  “No, John, not with sadness . . . but wonder. I hope she knew what we know. Do you think she ever did?”

  John rose on his elbow and smiled down into his wife’s eyes. “I’m sure of it, my love.”

  “How so?”

  “When I was a very young man new come to court, I saw Elizabeth with the Earl of Leicester before he died . . .”

  “Her sweet Robin?”

  “Aye.”

  “They were in their middle years, yet it was written in their eyes whenever they were together in a room, whenever they touched . . . plain written for all to see. They had loved in every way and carried it always on their faces.”

  “She never had what we will have.”

  “No, sweeting, but she never lost him. Whenever his name was spoken in after years—”

  Mary touched his lips with her own. “I saw, John. Her face became a mask to hide memory.” She sighed a whisper. “Now they have each other for eternity. Will we, John?”

  He grinned. “Longer.”

  Dearest John, he always knew the one word that would make her heart smile.

  There was a knock at the door. “Sir John, your hot veal pie has come.” There was a clatter as the trencher was placed on the floor.

  “Are you hungry, Lady Harington?” John murmured, the words kissing her ear.

  “No,” she answered, and pulled her shift up and over their heads to make a world for them alone.

  The servant’s footsteps retreated back down the stairs.

  EPILOGUE

  April 28, 1603

  Westminster Abbey

  Queen Elizabeth’s Funeral

  Her hand clasped firmly against his heart, Sir John and Lady Harington stopped at a small parish church on their way to the abbey to read the carved inscription set up in many London churches by a loving people.

  CHASTE PATRONESS OF TRUE RELIGION,

  IN COURT A SAINT, IN FIELD AN AMAZON,

  GLORIOUS IN LIFE, DEPLORED IN HER DEATH,

  SUCH WAS UNPARALLELED

  ELIZABETH.

  Cloaked in memories, they walked on toward Westminster Abbey through increasing crowds. The rain had ceased, though it dripped from eaves and leaves as bellringers preceded the funeral procession, shouting, “Make way, make way!” to part the people. “Your queen comes among you for a last time.”

  Londoners lined every street and alley leading to the old abbey and hung from their high-storied windows. A great moan rose as the queen’s long procession slowly came into view, her crowned and robed effigy lying atop the purple-draped coffin drawn by four matched horses. Muffled drums beat a measured cadence for a following company of pikemen with their halberds turned down.

  John’s arm went about Mary’s quaking shoulders as they pushed their way forward. “We will come through this, sweet wife,” he said, his words clear and comforting despite the tumult.

  She turned her face up to him, grateful for his words, knowing them to be true, but needing them all the same.

  “It’s Gloriana to the life!” Londoners exclaimed at sight of the effigy, recognizing her easily, since she had often passed in procession among them. Some wiped away tears, the dead queen’s image being so much as she had ever been, even to holding her orb and scepter against her breast. A few made a sign of the cross with a t
humb pushed between two fingers to ward off the devil, who was always lurking near death to grab a wayward soul.

  “Look on her, boy,” said a master haberdasher, judging by his gown, to his ’prentice, pushing him forward for a better look. “Another like our virgin queen won’t come again in your life.”

  “More’s the better,” the ’prentice muttered. “We got good King James now.”

  “Hold your tongue, boy!” John said, his grief turned to fury, though he did not lay hands on the lad. “I have basked in her sun as Queen’s Champion, and your master has the right of it.”

  The merchant, eyeing John’s clothes and medals, bowed his head near to his knees, pushing the boy low, too. “Humbly begging pardon, sir, for this stupid one.” He gave the lad a sharp rap on the head. “You’re not with your fellows in a Bankside tavern. The king could still count it treason to speak against her.”

  “If not the king,” John said, still angered, “then I will.”

  The boy rubbed his sore head and looked sullen and stubborn. “Others do say worse, sir. That she were always a bastard as her father first named her. And more, they say she had bastards of her own in plenty.”

  Mary nearly choked. “I was one of her ladies, and those who say such slanders speak lies.”

  The haberdasher bowed hastily. “Oh, my lady, blame me for being a lax master. I spared my sister’s boy whippings due, but will not spare him this one, you may be certain.”

  The master’s hand went tight across the lad’s mouth. “One more word and you’ll end in the Clink Prison and I’ll not go surety. Mark you well, boy. One more word and you’re just another masterless beggar thieving your bread and ale while the gallows tree waits. Apologize to this lord and lady.”

  Subdued, the boy dug his dirty toe between the cobbles.

  John left the lad mumbling and pushed a way clear for Mary, leading her toward the south entrance. “Do not let your heart break, sweet. There will always be such stupid gossipers. She was a woman beyond women, beyond a man’s understanding.”