The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  “It is strange that Malpas has never tried to get her back,” commented Tansy, pausing, tray on hip, beside Tom Hood, who was home on a brief visit to set his local business in order.

  “He probably caught her in someone else’s bed,” suggested Tom, eyeing the sultry little beauty with mild interest.

  “You think she was his mistress?”

  Tom shrugged a careless affirmation. “What else? A lecher like Hugh Malpas and an exciting wanton like her. Not that he was the only one,” he laughed, “judging from some of the men’s boasting.”

  Tansy looked across at Gladys plucking with boredom at the strings of a lute as the sun went down, and was nagged again by something which she could not understand. “Then how can she endure living decently here?”

  For the first time it occurred to Tom to wonder the same thing. “She must have some very good reason, I suppose,” he agreed slowly.

  Tansy turned her back on singer and audience, put down her tray on a horse-trough, and faced him. “I hate living here since my father died,” she said, with queer intensity.

  Considering the bright prospects which he now had, he might well have seized on her heartfelt confession and urged her again to marry him, but his mind was seething with inventions and ambitions which he wanted to satisfy first. He was &t that high moment of a young man’s life when a successful career was opening out before him. He took her free hand in his, and looked up at her with his devastating smile, but did not mention marriage. “My poor sweet! It must be unbearably grim. And worse, I wager, since that sly wench came into the household. You must see more of dear old Master Jordan, and get out more on Pippin.”

  It was wonderful to have him there to talk to again — someone to whom she could say any foolish thing which entered her head, even the half-formed fancies which she herself could not understand. “Lately I have had a feeling of — ”

  “Of what, dear Tansy?”

  “A kind of foreboding. A sense of something sinister going to happen.”

  “Like your step-mother splitting her best gown in church through guzzling sweetmeats.”

  “Oh, Tom, I wish you were not going back to London. Just your foolishness and laughter make everything wholesome and normal again.”

  Reluctant as he was to leave her, at the mention of London Tom’s mind was instantly filled with enthusiasm for his new work. “I must go. Sir Walter said it was difficult to spare me even for these few days to set my business here in order. I may be sailing to Calais with him soon, to meet the captain of our garrison there. He is interested in a new kind of arrow shaft, more on the cannon principle, which I am working on.”

  “And then?”

  “Then — who knows? I may come back to England a reasonably rich man. And I shall owe it all to Dick Broome, who is still only an apprentice,” he had the generosity to add, half reluctantly.

  “But he is doing well?” asked Tansy, trying to hide the eagerness in her voice.

  “He should go far. His term is nearly finished. He will soon become a freeman of his Guild, and his master, Hurland Dale, thinks highly of him. I overheard him and Sir Walter, discussing some arches which Dick had built, and Sir Walter referring to him as ‘that clever young ‘prentice of yours’”

  “Then you see how right he was in wanting to be a mason 1” And because she wanted them to be friends she looked searchingly at her companion. “You really like him, don’t you, Tom? Apart from being grateful?”

  “It would be difficult not to. There is something about him different from the rest of us.”

  Knowing what she knew, Tansy felt this to be scarcely surprising. “How do you mean — different?” she asked, pursuing a subject of which she could not tire.

  “Oh, as if he thought and felt more deeply. I know his fellow apprentices respect him. They may laugh at him sometimes for studying or putting his whole self into his work when he might be out with them, painting the town red. But I’ve noticed they always go to him if they have some personal trouble, or there is some communal decision to be made. As if he had authority — which is odd, since there never was a more retiring sort of fellow.”

  Tansy glowed with pride. “You don’t think he is working too hard?” she asked, managing to achieve an admirable casualness.

  “Dickon? Oh, no. He is strong as a horse, really. When he gives time and mind to it he can beat most of us at the butts or wrestling, and is the very devil at that football game they are forever playing through the streets, to the fury of die staider citizens.”

  “You spend a good deal of your free time with them, don’t you?”

  “I did at first. Dickon was extraordinarily kind to me when I arrived, a stranger in London. But I shan’t be there much longer.”

  Because the obliging chapman would not be coming to Leicester for some weeks, Tansy seized her chance. “Would you take a letter to him?”

  “Not if it is a love letter,” stipulated Tom promptly.

  “An ordinary friendly letter,” Tansy assured him. “After all, I have written to him before and Master Jordan helped me. Thanking him for his quick thinking on your behalf when Sir Walter Moyle’s fletcher died.”

  “Using that as an excuse, you mean, you artful jade! And you don’t have to hold my obligation to that young man over me for ever.”

  “I am sure Dickon himself would be the last even to think of it. He was so very grateful about the horse. It meant a lot to him, getting out of Leicester just then.”

  “I was well paid for getting him that horse at the time. In kisses, remember?” said Tom, pulling her further into the shade of the mulberry tree.

  “But you don’t need such payment now, I’m sure. And only for a letter,” teased Tansy. “Aren’t the girls in London prettier?”

  “No prettier, but much bolder.”

  “And so you make love to them all?”

  “At least they’re not so tantalizing as some I know in this town,” he complained, as she managed to slip from his arms.

  For either kisses held more meaning for Tansy now, or Tom must have let her go more easily. Even with the girl he loved best against his heart, and a sickle moon sailing up through the mulberry branches and the plaintive notes of a love-song in the air, the up-and-coming fletcher’s mind was already half-way to Calais.

  13

  Tansy took Tom’s advice and went out more often for rides and spent more time with friends. There seemed no need to make extra money by exploiting the King’s Bed, and since the room was usually full of feminine gear it was difficult to do so. It ceased to be pushed as an attraction, and only when visitors were very insistent was it shown.

  One afternoon when she had planned to watch a company of mummers performing in the open space of the Newarke opposite the castle, Tansy found it particularly difficult to be patient with a party of merchants’ wives from York. They wanted to pore over everything that had belonged to the late King as if they were viewing sacred relics, and she herself was worrying over a grazed knee which Pippin had sustained and which Jod had been poulticing. And to her annoyance, just as she was at last getting rid of them, she was aware of another potential viewer waiting on the landing. He must have come up the stairs very quietly for so big a man and, instead of looking round quickly while they were still there, he seemed to be standing about waiting for their departure.

  She took their money, bade them farewell and turned to him with ill-concealed annoyance. To her surprise it was Hugh Malpas.

  “I came around because your maltster’s new driver has delivered me your load by mistake,” he said. “They told me you were up here, and ridiculously enough for one who lives so near, I have never yet seen this money-making royal bed of yours.”

  “And I’ve no mind to show it to you now,” thought Tansy, although he held out his money and assured her that he had no desire to trade on his propinquity. Aloud she said, none too civilly, “This is Mistress Marsh’s own bedroom now.”

  “Oh, so this is where the fair Rose slee
ps now,” he said facetiously, looking round with interest.

  “It is larger and sunnier and looks on to the street,” explained Tansy, at her most matter-of-fact.

  “It certainly is large. Finer than any room I have at the Crown,” he admitted handsomely. “And does she sleep in the royal bed?”

  “She does now.”

  “They say that it takes to pieces very ingeniously for travelling. Did you see it being set up?”

  “Yes. It took the men only a few minutes.”

  “And that fine cupboard. Does that take to pieces, too?”

  “Not so far as I know. Why should it? It is nothing to do with King Richard. My step-mother bought it afterwards for her gowns.”

  “Those expensive gowns with which she so much enlivens Leicester. She is fortunate to be able to afford such a well-finished bit of furniture as well.”

  His flippant condescension annoyed her, and all the time he was poking fun at Marsh possessions he was running those repulsive-looking fingers experimentally along the cupboard door, the chimney breast, the wooden sides of the bed and even the wooden bolt on the inside of the door.

  “You don’t give away much information, do you?” he complained, as she stood silent.

  “You are not in the least interested in King Richard, so you had better take your money back,” flared Tansy,, holding it out to him.

  “Oh, come, Tansy,” he protested. “I was listening outside and thought your patter excellent. Why else should I have come in?”

  “Because you are the kind of man who would take a leering interest in any bed slept in by an attractive woman.”

  He stared at her in surprise, having always thought of her as the simple, gullible daughter of the house, and never as an observant, spirited woman in her own right. He had no means of knowing that something bigger than her upbringing, and outside of her quiet provincial life, had changed and strengthened her. Even Tansy herself was sometimes surprised how quickly she saw through people’s motives and pretences, and how fearlessly she could now speak up about them.

  “You did not like my verses about the local inns?” he suggested, half apologetically.

  “Nor the jade who sang them,” she answered, throwing his money on the window seat since he would not take it. “Though I cannot imagine why you, with such a keen eye to business, turned her out.”

  “Well, your step-mother seems to like her, so you are stuck with her now,” he said with a grin. “I believe she even sings up in this room — having heard her when I have been passing, of course.”

  “Yes, she sometimes sings to her mistress. My step-mother often cannot sleep of late.”

  “Must be the bed. They say King Richard couldn’t.”

  “That, or eating too richly at supper,” said Tansy, suppressing a shudder yet trying to speak lightly.

  “Or counting her gold.”

  They both laughed, and went out of the room together on rather better terms, and Tansy was contemptuously amused to see that he picked up his money after all. But when he had gone and the matter of the malt had been put right, she asked Dilly, who was polishing floor-boards near the foot of the stairs, why she had sent Master Malpas up.

  “I never sent him nowhere,” remonstrated the girl in surprise. “Never see’d him till you come down with him just now.”

  “And you’ve been here all the time?”

  “Since them other folk come in asking to see the bed.”

  “Perhaps your mistress sent him?”

  “She’s been out since dinner.”

  “Then I suppose he must have come up the guests’ outside staircase from the yard,” said Tansy.

  “Like his impudence!” snickered Dilly.

  When Rose came back from the Newarke she was full of the excellent show she and her friends had seen, and mimicked the mummers for the delight and envy of her household, so that Tansy thought only of how much she would have liked to be there, and little more of Malpas’s visit. But late that same evening the whole question of his mode of entry took on a new significance.

  She had heard Pippin whinnying several times, and, guessing that Jod would be fast asleep, went quietly downstairs and opened the back door preparatory to going to the stable. To her horrified amazement, as she stood there in the shadow, she saw Gladys flit across the deserted yard and unbolt the lane gate to admit her former master, and the two of them go up the outside staircase together and disappear into her bedroom. Into the room which, because of its convenient position above the kitchen and at the top of the stone stairs, had always been her parents’ room. Neither Malpas nor the girl said a word, but it was clear from their movements that this was a frequent proceeding. And Tansy stood there taking in the full, unpleasant significance of it. “No wonder she can manage to live here so respectably!” she thought, remembering her own conversation with Tom. But it was not so much the Welsh girl’s known immorality which shocked her, as her deliberate deceitfulness. And her own horror of Malpas. And the growing mystery. For if Gladys were still his mistress why in the world had he pretended to turn her away? And why had she sought employment at the Blue Boar?

  Tansy’s fingers dropped from the lantern she had been about to light. It was a starlit night and she found her way quietly across to Pippin’s stable, making no sound. And all the time she was changing the bran poultice and the affectionate beast was nuzzling her gratefully like a comforted child, her mind was on this chance revelation. She felt her home abused, soiled, spied upon. And all for what purpose? As Tom had said, “If she comes to live here she must have some good reason.” Or rather, thought Tansy, some bad reason. She stood for a long time with her cheek against the soft warmth of Pippin’s neck wondering what she ought to do about it.

  Gladys would have to go. Surely, Rose herself would be the first to agree? Or would she, favouring the girl as she did, only laugh and tell Tansy, in her jibing way, that it was just a case of the pot calling the kettle black, except that some people preferred a bed to a hayloft? She was quite capable of it, thought Tansy, but not when the lover happened to be Hugh Malpas. Malpas, her rival, on her own business premises. Malpas admitted nightly by stealth. All the sharp, money-loving part of her would be up in arms. Suddenly Tansy wanted to tell Rose — Rose who was more worldly wise, less vulnerable, and who would know what to do, and do it quickly and stridently.

  “I will tell her now,” she decided. “She always says she cannot sleep until late. At least I can see if there is candlelight showing beneath her door. If there isn’t I will leave it till the morning. But how much better to tell her now, when I know they are there — in my father’s room. When there is proof of what I say. When she can catch them there, and sharpen her tongue on the odious wretch and throw the bitch out on to the street with every justification.”

  Tansy went back into the house and slowly, reluctantly mounted the wide stairs. As she neared the top she saw a glimmer of light beneath the bottom of the best room door as she had seen it late that Saturday night when the King slept there. She would go in and tell her step-mother now, and then the responsibility of this unpleasant affair would no longer be hers. She would have to knock on the door for Rose to unbolt it, and she would undoubtedly be cross. Yet by the time she reached the quiet landing Tansy felt she could not tell her soon enough. She wanted to be with Rose, to have told her. As if impelled by desire for company, she almost ran across the landing.

  She raised her hand to knock, but to her surprise noticed that the door stood the merest fraction ajar and then saw that the wooden bolt had been sawn through. Fearing she knew not what, she pushed the door open noiselessly and went in. Candlelight flickered in a pool of light beyond the shadows thrown by the tester of the bed. But the mistress of the Blue Boar was asleep. Tansy could see the outline of her obese body outlined comfortably beneath the coverlet, and the rhythmic rise and fall of her breathing. At first she believed her to be alone. Then, as she tiptoed further into the room, she saw the two figures kneeling on the floor on
the far side of the bed. The very two about whom she had come to warn her step-mother. Malpas and the girl Gladys. And between them the gold. A carpet of gold pieces spread out across a shallow, secret drawer almost on the level of the floor. A drawer only about an inch deep which was so cunningly made that it had always looked like the solid bottom of the bed itself, beneath the box so obviously meant for keeping clothes and bedding. The drawer in which the late King must have kept his money, the secret of which Rose Marsh must have discovered.

  In a flash, as she stood there, enlightenment came to Tansy. She remembered the gold pieces which she herself had found on the floor. Probably, after the bed had been moved again, Rose had found some more. Which was when she had bought the cupboard and the expensive cloak. But either she had been more practically minded or it had been too long after Bosworth for her to imagine that they had been dropped from any king’s or courtier’s purse. She must have suspected their source. She had moved into the room herself, to have time and opportunity to search. And then there had been the evening when she was looking so surreptitiously for a chisel. Everything fitted into the explanation. But, having made her welcome discovery, Rose Marsh was not the woman to curb her extravagance for the sake of caution, and the whole town had begun to wonder where she got her money from. And Malpas, the enterprising, had managed to find out. His reason for parting with Gladys became abundantly clear. With a clever, favour-currying spy on the premises it should not have been difficult.

  He and Gladys were bent so low over the money, scraping it so greedily into a couple of sacks, that for a few moments they did not know themselves to be observed. It was easy game for them, in an inn run by women. And they had chosen a night when there happened to be no travellers sleeping on the first floor. With mounting terror, Tansy realized that there was no man within call. A few more minutes and their task would have been done, and they would have been safely away and unsuspected in their own beds — had it not been for a pony whinnying in pain.