by Jane Feather
“You will share Joan’s bed. Joan, make sure Rosamund understands the way we do things,” the countess declared, then nodded and sailed across the chamber to where her fellow peeresses were gathered beneath the window.
Rosamund sat down awkwardly on a low stool close to Joan. “Should I not take my belongings to our chamber?”
“Oh, someone will have seen to that,” the girl said airily. She glanced around. “But I have an idea that might get us out of here for a while.” She set aside her embroidery and got up, hurrying across to Lady Shrewsbury. “My lady, may I show Rosamund to our chamber and acquaint her a little with the palace?”
“As her majesty is otherwise occupied and I do not expect her to return within the hour, you may do so.” Her ladyship didn’t raise her eyes from her own needlework as she continued in slightly louder tones, “Rosamund, change your gown. Now your presentation is complete, you have no need to wear court dress. That is reserved for formal occasions.”
Joan dropped a curtsy and went back to Rosamund. “Come, we have permission to leave.”
Rosamund followed her out into the antechamber and from there into the long, crowded corridor without. “Is it necessary to ask for leave every time?” Rosamund dodged a jostling footman carrying a rolled carpet.
“Oh, yes. And it’s not always granted either. If her majesty is present, then you must request leave first from Lady Shrewsbury, and if she thinks your need is urgent, she will ask the queen, who will give permission, and then you will be called forward and have to make your request directly to her majesty in order to receive her permission.”
It sounded rather tedious to Rosamund, but she was too absorbed in the sights and sounds of the corridors and antechambers through which they passed to fret overlong about such restrictions. The richness of the courtiers’ clothes, both male and female, the sparkle and dazzle of jeweled embroidery, chains, and necklaces made even Thomas’s finery seem shabby. There was so much noise everywhere. Booted feet marching on the stone floors, the clang of iron as sword sheaths swung against the walls in the press of people, the constant loud voices raised to be heard, and the whole pierced every few minutes by a blast on a horn and a crier pushing his way forward, shouting at the top of his voice the name of someone summoned to somewhere for some reason.
Joan deftly threaded her way through the racketing chaos and took a flight of wooden stairs. It was quieter as they climbed, and climbed, and climbed. They emerged into a dusty attic room, furnished with three beds, footed with heavy oak chests, a few stools, a washstand, and several linen presses and armoires. Tiny windows were set high in the plaster-and-lath walls, and dust motes danced in the rays of sunlight.
“It’s cold as the grave in here in the winter, and hot as Hades in summer.” Joan stood on tiptoe to examine her reflection in a piece of polished tin. She dabbed disconsolately at her brow and cheeks. “These freckles are worse than ever in the heat, and I don’t have any powder. Do you have any I could borrow?” She turned hopefully back to Rosamund.
“No, I’m afraid I don’t.” Rosamund had no knowledge of such things. “We could try to find some flour,” she suggested, trying to be helpful.
“No, it just cakes in the heat and makes you look as if you have leprosy. Anyway, this is our bed.” Joan thumped down on one of the beds. “We have to share the chest. The linen press and the armoire . . .” She shrugged. “You have to fight for space there.”
“This is where we’re to sleep?” Rosamund was stunned. After the simple privacy of her room at Scadbury and the luxurious comfort of her chamber in Seething Lane, she couldn’t believe that in a royal palace she was to be reduced to this.
“Oh, this is quite comfortable compared with some of the places,” Joan said with a slightly pitying smile. “When the queen goes on progress, we end up anywhere anyone can house us in the manors who entertain her majesty. I’ve slept above the stables on more than one occasion. It doesn’t make life easy when you must always look your best. And the fleas . . . ugh.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “At least in the queen’s own residences, they change the straw in the mattresses quite often, and the rushes are changed every month. And we examine each other’s heads for lice regularly. There’s always lye soap if we need it.”
This was palace living? Rosamund perched on the bed, hearing the straw crunch as the mattress yielded to her weight. She had had a down mattress in Seething Lane, and horsehair at Scadbury. And she had never shared a bed.
She noticed her traveling chest against the wall. Joan had spoken truly. “I’ll unpack my things.” She stood up.
“Oh, no, not now. That’s a waste of our liberty. Just change your gown quickly. I will help.” Joan jumped to her feet and within ten minutes Rosamund was back in her green gown, newly refurbished with a standing collar and a girdle of twisted golden thread.
“That looks so cool and comfortable,” Joan said enviously. “How many gowns do you have?”
“Just this and one other,” Rosamund answered, remembering Lady Walsingham’s advice. She shrugged. “My family is not wealthy.”
“Neither is mine.” Joan sounded relieved. She bounded towards the door. “I have permission to show you around. Let us go into the garden before someone sends for us.”
Rosamund glanced around the dusty, unwelcoming dorter and decided the less time she spent in here the happier she’d be.
Joan led the way back down the stairs and through a bewildering series of corridors, down short flights of stairs, up others, and finally down a staircase that led directly into a paved courtyard.
“I’d never find my way back.” Rosamund turned to look back at the edifice of Whitehall Palace. “How long did it take you?”
“Not long. You’ll learn quickly enough. This way.” Joan headed for an archway in the far wall. They emerged into a pretty garden intersected with hedges. Joan paused, listening. Then she smiled. “Let’s see who’s at play.” She set off down a pathway leading to an arch cut into the far hedge.
Rosamund, following, could hear the sound of voices, the soft strumming of a lute, a voice raised in song. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and peonies and fresh-cut grass. The hedges were clipped into intricate designs, and she paused for a moment to admire a topiary peacock with full tail feathers, just as the real thing emerged from one of the openings in the hedge and preened himself in front of her.
She laughed and hurried to catch up with Joan at the end of the path. She was still a little behind Joan as they went through the arch into another square garden dominated by an oak tree, against whose broad trunk a young man sat playing a lute. It was Will Creighton, with a trio of young women, and two gentlemen, sitting on rugs on the grass.
Joan went boldly across to the group, and Will looked up from his lute, saying with a lazy smile, “Why, Lady Joan, how delightful. You have escaped the clutches of our lady of Shrewsbury, I see.”
Joan bridled and fluttered her eyelashes. “Her majesty has excused us for the afternoon and I am instructed to show our new maid of honor around the palace. It wouldn’t do for her to get lost.” She gestured to Rosamund, who had stopped a few paces behind her.
Will’s eyes widened fractionally as he saw her, then he asked with that same lazy smile, “And who is this new maiden?”
Rosamund relaxed, sure now that Will would not betray their acquaintance. She was faintly surprised at how comforting she found his familiar presence on this strangely disconcerting day, even though she couldn’t acknowledge it with more than a polite smile. She sketched a curtsy. “Rosamund Walsingham, sir.” Her smile moved to encompass the entire group.
Will laid aside his lute and rose to his feet. He bowed. “Mistress Walsingham, Will Creighton at your service. It is an honor to make your acquaintance. You are perhaps connected to Sir Francis?”
A suspiciously conspiratorial gleam was in his eye as he asked this, and she had to conceal her own answering amusement as she played along. “Sir Francis Walsingham is my cous
in, sir.” Her family credentials were now established for the company. The gentlemen of the group had risen and greeted her with murmured introductions and courteous bows. The ladies remained on the grass, but they smiled with a friendly warmth that was a welcome contrast to the frigid greetings of the maids of honor and ladies of the bedchamber in the queen’s apartments.
A striking woman with dark hair and eyes such a deep blue as to be almost purple said, “You are most welcome, Mistress Walsingham. A new face is always a pleasure. Pray sit down here.” She patted the rug beside her.
Rosamund sat down in a graceful swirl of skirts, surprised at how easy a maneuver it was to accomplish even with a farthingale. Joan followed suit, dabbing self-consciously at her damp freckles with a scrap of lace handkerchief.
Will indicated his lute. “I am engaged in composing a most melancholy love song to a pair of very fine eyes.”
Laughter rippled around the group and one of the ladies blushed faintly. A basket of cherries was passed around and Will Creighton plucked his lute and continued with his composition.
His luxuriant brown curls, artfully disheveled, flopped over one eye as he bent over his instrument. It was for deliberate effect, Rosamund decided. If he thought it made him look romantic, the epitome of courtly love, he was perfectly right. His fingers were long and slender on the strings and his voice was pleasing. She couldn’t help a faintly disappointed response to the words and sentiment of his ballad, however. But she told herself it was hardly fair to compare Will’s amateur efforts at entertaining a group of courtiers to Kit Marlowe’s fierce versifying, or the delicate literary pastorals of Thomas Watson. And she had no objections to sitting in the sunshine listening to him for as long as he was willing to play.
Joan suddenly gasped and scrambled inelegantly to her feet. “Rosamund, we’ve been away for nearly an hour. We must hurry back. The queen dines in state this evening and there is to be dancing afterwards. We must get ready.”
Rosamund found Will Creighton’s hand extended to help her to her feet and she took it. He smiled at her, his head tilted slightly, his grip tightening as he pulled her up and she rose in a graceful movement. “I hope you will dance tonight, Mistress Walsingham.”
“Of course she will,” Joan stated. “The queen does not permit her ladies to sit on the sidelines. She loves dancing too much herself.”
“Then it seems that I will be dancing, Master Creighton.” Rosamund met his smile with a complicit one of her own. “Ladies . . . gentlemen.” She dropped a curtsy to the assembled company and turned to follow Joan back to the palace.
“Who is the dark lady, with those extraordinary deep blue eyes?” she asked Joan as they entered the palace.
“Oh, that’s Agathe, Lady Leinster. She’s half-French but was married to an Irish count. She’s been a widow for at least two years. There are bets on all the time at court as to who will get her next,” Joan said. “But the queen will make the decision and she hasn’t done so yet.” Her voice dropped to a mere whisper. “ ’Tis rumored that Agathe can’t wait for a husband and takes lovers all the time. If the queen finds out, she’ll banish her, send her back to Ireland, or maybe even France. I don’t know how she dares take the risk.”
“She seems so young to be widowed,” Rosamund observed, fascinated. She had been drawn to Lady Leinster for some reason, something in her smile, a certain wicked twitch to her lips that had intrigued her. “Perhaps after a taste of the marriage bed she’s reluctant to give up the pleasure.”
Joan stared at her. “She’s no younger than many, she must be twenty at least. And what woman enjoys the marriage bed?”
“It can’t be all bad,” Rosamund said, reflecting that her only evidence for the pleasures of carnal intercourse came from observing her brother and Christopher Marlowe, but it stood to reason that a man and a woman could enjoy it too.
“That’s not what my sisters say.” Joan changed the subject. “It’s been a week since her majesty last dined in state. At least when she does, there is entertainment and always dancing, and we dine in the great hall with the rest of the company. When she dines privately, we must attend her, but we have to dine in our chamber beforehand. It is so tiresome to stand for hour after hour while the queen toys with her pigeon pie.”
Rosamund could well believe it. “Do we change our dress for the evening?”
“Yes, you must put on your court dress again.” Joan glanced at her. “Do you have another court dress?”
“I have one other,” Rosamund admitted.
“Then you are fortunate.” Joan sounded a little chilly.
“My court dresses were fashioned from gowns that Lady Walsingham has no further need for.” Rosamund hoped this confidence would placate Joan, who, it seemed, was her only potential friend among the queen’s attendants. Will Creighton, of course, was a different matter, and she might find a companionable ally in Lady Leinster in time.
“Most of us make do and mend,” Joan responded. “It helps that her majesty doesn’t like her ladies to compete with her in their finery. She can become very cross and throw things.”
Agathe leaned against the tree, feeling the knobs on the trunk digging into her back as Arnaud pressed against her, his fingers pushing up her chin, his mouth closing roughly over hers. She wriggled and his hold tightened, his tongue plunging deeper into her mouth. The inevitable heat crept through her loins, the muscles of her thighs tightening with excitement and the ever present fear of discovery. Arnaud would do this sometimes, take her in the open air, in some part of the palace gardens where anyone could walk past. The danger of discovery drove him to greater passion and her own matched it.
He released her mouth abruptly, put his hands on her shoulders, and forced her down to her knees, her skirts billowing in a corolla around her. She knew what he was demanding and her fingers moved swiftly to untruss his hose. She took his penis in her mouth and he drove deep into her throat as he had done with his tongue, and her eyes streamed as he filled her mouth. He held her head fast, murmuring to her as her tongue moved, bringing him to climax. She could hear through the red mists filling her head the sound of voices in the distance, a laugh, and a wash of panic threatened to swamp her. And then she fell back onto her ankles, her hand at her mouth.
He looked down at her, a smile on his lips. “Do me up.”
She obeyed, her fingers fumbling a little in her haste with the laces of his hose. She was to have no satisfaction herself then this afternoon, but that was not unusual. And Arnaud knew full well the heights to which denial and anticipation would drive her.
“Has anyone new arrived at court?” he asked, stepping away from her as she struggled to her feet.
“A new maid of honor. Rosamund Walsingham, I think she said.” She looked at him curiously. “Why?”
He shrugged. “No reason. I like to know what’s going on, and you, ma chère, are in a good position to keep me informed. She must be related then to Walsingham.”
“Sir Francis’s cousin, she said.” Agathe brushed down her skirt.
Arnaud smiled. “You had better go back and dress for the evening.”
“Will I see you tonight?”
“It depends. I may play at the tables until late. If I want you, I’ll send for you.” He gave her a slight mocking bow and strolled away.
Agathe cursed him under her breath even as her body stirred anew at the prospect of their next encounter. He would not deprive her then.
Chapter Ten
THE OTHER MAIDS of honor were already in the dorter when Joan and Rosamund went in. They were chattering together, helping each other with laces and pins, and barely glanced at the two junior members of their group.
Joan helped Rosamund unpack the rest of her gowns, and when she lifted out the dress of rose velvet with its seed-pearl embroidery, the chatter stopped as the other women turned to look.
“It’s well enough,” declared Arbella Vesey in a none-too-discreet whisper. “But I doubt the rose color will suit that
hair. Who could have thought it would?”
Rosamund bit down on her inner cheek to keep from uttering the verbal assault hovering on her tongue. Lady Walsingham’s advice was still clear in her head, and she could not afford to make enemies, even by defending herself and her patroness. She pretended she hadn’t heard and hung the gown in the armoire, careful not to displace the other gowns as she squeezed her own into a corner. This evening she decided it would be politic to wear the same emerald green damask she had worn for her presentation.
She stowed the rest of her possessions as best she could, then helped Joan with her own court dress, lacing her tightly as Joan clutched the bedpost and urged her to greater effort. “I am determined to have a waist a man’s hand can span,” she gasped. “A half inch more, Rosamund.”
“I’ll break a rib if I do.” Rosamund tied off the laces. “No one could make a waist any smaller than that.”
Joan helped her with the laces of her own gown, while their companions continued with their exclusive whispers until they left the dorter in a bevy, chattering like a flock of starlings. Rosamund was glad to see them go. Their company made her uneasy, as if they had the power to harm her in some way.
Joan stood absolutely still, as if listening for something, then whispered, “Guard the door. Let me know if anyone’s on the stairs.” She darted across the room to the chest at the foot of the first bed. Rosamund, somewhat bemused, went to the door, her ear pressed to the crack.
Joan gingerly lifted the lid of the chest and took out a small box. She opened it carefully and dipped her lace handkerchief into it. She dabbed the handkerchief on her nose and cheeks before closing the box, returning it to the chest and quietly dropping the lid. She came over to Rosamund at the door. “Does that look better? It’s not all blotchy?”