The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  He swung his legs over the side of the bed and transferred his gaze to her troubled face. “I have been thinking, sweet. As we decided last night, it would be quite useless for me to see any London builders. They would want a reference, and the only name I could give would be Hurland Dale’s. And one may not work outside one’s Guild. I must go to Oxford, where new colleges are being built. There is great demand for good masons there.”

  “Oxford! Leave here, and go to Oxford!” repeated Tansy, looking round the room they had striven to make so pleasant, and feeling as if the bottom were dropping out of her world.

  “I will go alone first and get employment, and then find some place for us both. Don’t look so desolate, my dear. You remember how fortunate we were in Oxford before.” Tansy did not answer. She had not been married then. Once one was married and carrying a man’s child, one did not expect to be separated like this. “I should not be long. A few weeks, perhaps,” Dickon was saying,

  “And suppose Master John Moyle comes to hear of this through Tom or someone?”

  “You mean — Oh, no, Tansy. He would not turn you out. Not until my return, at any rate. He is too fine a man. And hasn’t his sister always shown herself to be your friend?”

  He pulled on some clothes, and they discussed his idea in more detail while breaking their fast. “If you think this best, go soon,” said Tansy, thinking only that the sooner he went the sooner he would be back.

  “I will go this very day; so put me up some food for the journey,” he said, with all his father’s decisiveness. And with all his own pride, he refused to take any of her money for his needs. “I shall soon be earning there, even if I have to take unskilled labour until I find something better,” he assured her.

  His determined cheerfulness brought tears to Tansy’s eyes, and seeing them his decision momentarily waned. “I hate to leave you here alone. Specially at nights.”

  “I shall not be afraid,” lied Tansy, trying to emulate his courage. “After all, the falconer and his wife are not far away.”

  “How I wish Will Jordan could be with you!” exclaimed Dickon, when his tools had been carefully greased and wrapped and put into their special box, and both his saddle bags packed.

  “He will be leaving London to-morrow, or his pupils will have forgotten everything they ever learned.” The thought of school books carried her on to something more erudite. “What about The Sayings of the Philosophers?”

  “I must leave that in your care.”

  “It is so valuable — Dickon, do you know what I should like above everything? If Jod could come, instead of returning to Leicester with Master Jordan.”

  “To guard my book instead of money bags? A splendid idea! But for me the main advantage of his coming would be to guard you. Before turning left on to the Oxford road I will go on to Cheapside and ask him.”

  “He told me he had been hiring himself only for odd work in Leicester. He wasn’t happy at the Blue Boar after I left. Do you think — ”

  “Yes?”

  “That we could keep him with us. Even after you have work, and we are together again, I mean. He could look after the horses, and do the fires in winter — ”

  Dickon noticed how pale she was, but put it down to the shock and anxiety they had been through. “I should have thought of it before,” he said gently. “As Tom always says, the old fellow would commit murder for you. I will ask him to ride out before nightfall.”

  The thought cheered her immediately. “And give my dear love to Will Jordan — and to the Goodyears.” But on second thoughts, she wished he need not see them. “At an inn, with so many people going and coming — and Red Lakin dropping in — they are sure to hear some garbled version of what has happened.”

  “I suppose they will all think me mad,” agreed Dickon, miserably. “But I don’t have to explain my actions to anyone but you. Surely, a man is free to choose his own work. I have done nothing to be ashamed of. The shame would have been if I, a Plantagenet, had accepted.”

  But neither of them would ever be able to explain this. And, woman-like, Tansy wanted others to think well of her man.

  Parting so soon after their marriage was a cruel wrench, but Dickon promised her it would not be for long. And before nightfall Jod came, and she was partly comforted. The next day was full of small homely happinesses, arranging for the old ostler’s simple needs in one of the lofts above the partially disused stables. “I never had nothin’ but bare boards and straw afore,” he said, looking almost reverently at the woven mat and truckle bed she had provided. “But best of all will be to stay along o’ you, Mistress Tansy — or Mistress Broome, as I should recollect to say. And to have Pippin and the mare again to care for.”

  “You can take things more easily now without a yard full of horses, and impatient customers shouting for them all at once,” she told him, noticing how frail he began to look.

  “But I can still chop wood, and fetch and carry for you and Master Broome. An’ mostly I can fend for myself.”

  “But I shall see to it that you have at least one good hot meal a day,” insisted Tansy, feeling that part of her old home life had come back.

  But Jod was not her only visitor. A day or two later, when she was sitting mending her husband’s work-a-day hose, she heard a familiar voice, clear and friendly, calling to Jod, and then a quick step on the path. And tall Tom Hood was ducking his head to come through the open door. A finely dressed Tom these days, and at the moment full of urgent indignation. “What is this I hear about Dickon losing his job?” he demanded, throwing his fashionably plumed velvet cap across the table.

  “Master Dale no longer wants him,” answered Tansy, trying to keep her voice and fingers steady.

  “Then it is true?” Tom threw himself down on the fireside settle. “Oh, my poor Tansy! I put off a deputation of defence people from the Cinque Ports and came out immediately to see if I could do anything to help you both. Where is he?”

  “Gone to Oxford.”

  “To Oxford?”

  “Where there is much building going on. To try to find work.” As she crossed the room to put away hose and wool, Tom’s quick eye noticed that she walked almost like an old woman, with all the delicious spring and youth gone out of her. “He would not get any in London — now.”

  “But he is one of the finest craftsmen. He passed his examination so splendidly. And that red-headed friend of his rushed into the Boar last evening with some wild story about the Vertues themselves sending for him. And I thought, ‘Good God! The Vertues. He must be mad! And afterwards I heard this rumour that Dale had dismissed him. The man who told me was in his cups, so I simply laughed at it. I knew Dickon was as well on his way to success in his craft as — well, as I am in mine.” Tom leaned forward on the settle. “Tell me, did Hurland Dale make difficulties about losing him? He was the best craftsman he was ever likely to have. I can tell you now that most of the features in that house on the Strand which pleased the Moyles were things which Dickon had either designed or made.”

  “Far from making difficulties, Master Dale had done everything to help him. That was why he was so furious.”

  “Why, what happened, Tansy? Did the Vertue brothers really send for him?”

  There was nothing for it but to tell him. “They offered him some wonderful work — of which I may not speak. Something for the nation — like your new appointment as arms adviser to the King’s bowmen. And — he refused.”

  “Oh, come, Tansy! You mean he wasn’t quite good enough. Oh, I know your loyalty! For who,” he asked, with a shamefaced grin, “should know it more gratefully than I? When you first met Amy, I mean. And now you just can’t bring yourself to admit that Dickon failed. But, my dear, I do assure you there is nothing to be ashamed of. The standard of the master masons of England is renowned all over Europe.”

  “It is very high indeed, and he more than satisfied them. They offered him this important work,” repeated Tansy, with golden head held high. “And he refused.�
��

  Tom sprang to his feet. “Refused! You really mean it! He had a chance to work for the King’s mason, and he refused?”

  “He had a reason,” said Tansy, standing wretchedly by the window.

  A fury of exasperation rose in him against his friend, largely on her account “It would need to be a very strong reason” he began, almost contemptuously.

  “It was,” said Tansy quietly.

  He knew her well enough to be sure that he would hear no more. ‘Tor a nameless young man of any guts or ambition at all to refuse a chance to rise to the very top of his profession is something which I simply cannot understand.”

  “I am quite sure, Tom, that you could not understand,” she said angrily, pushing his fine plumed cap aside so that it fell to the floor.

  He accepted her estimation of his character with a shrug. “And now he leaves you here alone. Well, it is none of my business … except in so far as it affects you, for whom I have always cared. And I do care, Tansy. Oh, not ‘in the way I thought at first,” he added, careful not to touch her. “But even if I ever win Amy as my wife — and I adore her — I shall always know that you are the finest woman I have ever known.”

  His surprising words, and their obvious sincerity, were such a heart-warming comfort to her that she turned away to hide a rush of tears. “Thank you, dear Tom. It is not true, of course, what you say of me. But that you should feel that way means so much to me. Particularly just now, when things are going wrong. I only hope,” she added, with a sudden radiant smile shining through the tears, “that you may one day find out just how fine my husband is!”

  He stood for a moment or two picking thoughtfully at the broken feather in his cap. “I think I do know, really,” he said slowly. “There is something unusual about him — almost as if he were set in a finer mould than most of us. Some of our mutual friends feel it, too. Somehow, he is both sensitive and strong. Quiet and ordinary in his behaviour, and yet when he chooses he can make men heed his briefest word. He always entered into every kind of sport with the rest of us, and yet there is — an apartness — about him. As if he knew — sometimes — an intense loneliness.”

  Tansy looked at Tom with new appreciation. She had always admired his lively quickness of mind, loved his infectious gaiety — but never before had she credited him with such serious insight, or with thinking any more deeply than he spoke. “It is for me to prevent that apartness — that loneliness — from pressing too heavily upon him,” she said. And then, because it was not usual for them to be so solemn, she added lightly, “Will you not stay and eat, Master Fletcher?” “Non, non, ma chère,” he refused, treating her to his new French mannerisms. “A glass of your homemade wine, et voilà tout. I am a busy man these days.”

  “And deserve to be,” said Tansy, rising generously above her own bitter disappointment. “That is why it was so very kind of you to come.”

  “When you want me I will always come.”

  Tansy drove from her mind the thought that when she had wanted him most he had — quite reasonably — put ambition first. She would always be unutterably glad that it was Dickon who had come. But across the brimming tankard she handed him they smiled, liking each other better than they had ever done. “I am sorry I broke the fine feather in your cap, Tom,” she apologized, wishing that she had not hit out at it because it seemed symbolic.

  24

  Tansy was so overjoyed when Dickon came home from Oxford a month later that she scarcely worried because he said nothing about any fresh employment. He was very quiet, with that ruminative sort of quietness which suggested that his thoughts were elsewhere. His preoccupation made her feel left out, so that more than ever she missed Tom’s easy talk and laughter. Yet Dickon himself did not seem to be particularly worried or unhappy.

  “It was good of him to come, especially when he is doing such important work,” he said, when she told him of Tom’s visit. “And I am relieved that Moyle’s bailiff asked no awkward questions when he came, soon after I left, to collect the rent.”

  “Then you don’t think we shall be moving to Oxford?” said Tansy, realizing that things were beginning to look grave for them, and that her own money would not last for ever. And wondering how, if her husband had returned with no prospects, he could seem so disinterested — so concerned with something else. “Just what did you do all those weeks you were away?” she asked, after he had been home for nearly two days. “You have told me so little about it. Nor,” she added, out of her private hurt, “have you asked much about me.”

  He was all contrition at once. “Something happened which has put money, employment and everything else out of my head.”

  “Even me, your wife?”

  “I am afraid so, at the time. Tansy, it was one of those extraordinary coincidences. I still can’t believe it really happened. And before I talked about it, even to you — and I could not speak of it to anyone else — I had to sort out my mind.” He sat down on the settle beside her, absently drawing on to his knee, the small white kitten which Amy Moyle had sent her by the bailiff for company.

  “All you told me yesterday was that you had been in charge of repairs at some big mansion,” she said, settling herself within the loving warmth of his arm.

  “Yes. I never worked on any of the colleges at all. Directly I arrived and began making enquiries I was told that a responsible mason was needed out at Minster Lovell.”

  “Minster Lovell!” exclaimed Tansy. “Why, that must be the home of poor Lord Lovell — God rest his soul!”

  “Yes. The name attracted me at once, of course. And a fine mansion it is! And like the homes of many other Yorkists who fought at Bosworth, it was confiscated by the Tudor.”

  “And given to one of his supporters, I suppose?”

  “This particularly fine mansion he is giving to his uncle, Jasper Tudor, I think. Or possibly to his precious mother, the Lady Margaret Beaufort.”

  “They say he thinks far more of her than of his wife.”

  “It may well be, since Queen Elizabeth is my father’s niece, whereas the Lady Margaret is married to Lord Stanley. Anyway, he has given her so many mansions that she cannot use them all — ”

  “While some folks need a roof over their heads — ”

  “So Minster Lovell stands empty, except for an old caretaker. And naturally it is getting into a sad state of disrepair. I was given a couple of indifferent journeymen and told by some royal official what work was necessary. Food was supplied to us from a cottage on the estate, and we were left very much to ourselves. One of those skinflint jobs it was, and we had finished in just over a fortnight. I wasn’t worrying because the contractor who asked me to do it had promised me plenty of better work if I went straight back to him in Oxford. I was going to look for lodgings for the two of us as soon as I arrived.” Rubbing the kitten’s soft fur, Dickon sat staring in front of him “But I never did go back.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because I stayed — for something which I was privileged to do. I didn’t seek it, this time. It just happened. And I wasn’t even paid for it — not in money, that is.”

  Tansy sprang up and seized the astonished kitten from the lulling movement of his fingers. None too gently she set it down on the floor beside a bowl of milk. Anything to rouse him from his mood of crazy reminiscence.

  “Dickon, I implore you, don’t be so mysterious! Do you know, you have been quite different since you came home? As if your mind is only half here. And yet — ” she stood, with hands on hips and head on one side, studying his sensitive face — “and yet in some strange way you look more settled — more contented than I have ever seen you.”

  He rose and pulled her down beside him. “How well you understand me!”

  “I doubt if anyone really does,” retorted Tansy.

  “I warned you, did I not, my love, that you would find me difficult? But here is the coincidence that so shook me. The house was not really unoccupied. Lord Lovell himself was there — in hidin
g.”

  Exasperation gave way to amazement. “Then he wasn’t killed at Stoke?”

  “I think I realized almost from the first that there was someone. There was a room at the end of one of the wings with shelves full of books. I confess that when the other men had packed up their tools and gone I used to stay and browse on these. I had never before had such a chance. And sometimes it seemed to me that one or other of them had been moved. Or a marker put at some different page. And then early one morning I was up on the roof seeing to some broken slates and found myself looking down into a narrow walled garden, which I hadn’t realized existed. A sort of private garden between some woods and the little river Windrush which flows past the courtyard. And I saw a man walking there. I could only conclude that he was some local friend who had the use of it and who perhaps came into the library sometimes, by arrangement with the old caretaker. There was a locked door in the library which might well have opened into another room or into that garden.

  “And then, the last evening I was there, I went back into this room where the books were to finish a chapter of La Forteresse de Foy. I was completely absorbed in it when I heard the sound of a key being turned cautiously in a lock. I swung round to find the door open, and a man framed in the entrance to a smaller room.

  “I stood there, like a frightened fool, twisting the wedding ring on my finger as a kind of talisman against the supernatural. But he was no ghost. He was the same man I had seen in the garden. And he looked far more frightened than I. But at the same time unutterably glad. To my amazement he called me by my name. ‘Richard!’ he exclaimed, with a kind of awed joy.

  “I stammered some sort of apology — something about loving books. And then — completely astounded that he should seem to know me — I asked, ‘But how did you know my name, Sir?’

  “The gladness was dying out of his face by then. And the strange wonderment. He came further into the room and looked at me more closely. Then it is your name? What is your full name?’

  “‘Richard Broome,’ I told him.