King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  As I waited I could hear voices coming from the great hall, and by glancing through one of the doors of the serving screen had a momentary view of the interior. John Fermor’s high-born wife, who had been Maud Vaux, was sitting with her back to me by a leaping fire. “But the wedding-gown is already finished,” she was protesting, half bored and half resentful on her sister-in-law’s account. But John himself, his uncle John Brown, and the Skevingtons, père et fils, were too deep in discussion with a legal-looking little man to heed her. They were all seated about the long table at which I had once so joyously drunk wine in reunion with my former Northamptonshire master.

  “They have been going on like that ever since the servants cleared the board,” a rich, amused voice said quite close to me.Realising that I had not been alone in the semi-darkness, I turned with a start to find a stocky, cheerful-looking priest standing behind me. “You, too, are waiting?” I observed foolishly. “Have the Browns asked you to officiate in place of poor Father Thayne?”

  “They have not, young man. They attend the church of St.Mary the Virgin, whereas I have the cure of souls at St. Magdalen’s, near-by in Milk Street. But their Rector is sick abed, and the Browns are very well loved hereabouts—as well they should be, with all they have done for our sick poor. So, hearing of the sad imprisonment of their niece’s family priest—as one hears the least tittle of news from servants and street vendors in this lively city—I came to see if I, Thaddeus Morton, could be of any help.”

  “Yet you are not wholly of Father Thayne’s persuasion?” I suggested, observing the plain white collar about his neck, such as the new Archbishop Cranmer and his followers were beginning to wear, and thinking irrelevantly that no two parish priests could have looked less alike.

  My companion’s mundane cheeriness changed to a very real earnestness as he tried to give me an exact answer. “It is true that I see much which to my mind needs reform. I should, for instance, like to see some of the rich Abbey lands given to small farmers from whom common pastures have been enclosed. I would give the printed Gospels to the poorest dock porter in my parish, together with opportunity to learn to read them. Yes, I suppose I have modern views. But I doubt if I have that good man Thayne’s courage.”

  I liked Thaddeus Morton from that instant, and would have enjoyed staying to talk with him. But the servant returned with Emotte’s message that Mistress Fermor was in the solar on the first floor and would see me, so I made eagerly for the stairs.

  As I shot past the rubicund little priest I caught him grinning at my eager haste. “They say it is unlucky—” he was saying, incomprehensibly. And it was not until I was half-way up the wide, polished flight that I realised with amusement that, what with my new suit and my questioning about a priest to officiate and my knowledge of the household’s affairs, the good man must have mistaken me for the intended bridegroom.

  In the pleasant solar there was no gloom at all. It was the family living-room of a wealthy Master of the Mercers’ Guild, whose father and whose great-uncle had each in turn died Lord Mayor of London. Thick curtains of Dutch velvet had been drawn, and candles lit in silver sconces of rare Florentine workmanship. By their light two young maids, down on their knees with silk thread and scissors scattered beside them on an eastern rug, were putting some finishing touch to a shimmering wedding-gown spread like a swooning bride across a long chest carved with the City arms. Emotte stood by to superintend their every stitch, and beyond them, by the fire, stood Joanna—pale in spite of the glow, and lovelier even than I had remembered her. And so utterly lovable that my heart choked the words of greeting in my throat.

  She bade me welcome and sat down, indicating for me a stool on the opposite side of the hearth, but all her actions seemed stilted and embarrassed. As if that exquisite, detestable dress stretched between us made her already Oakham Skevington’s wife. As soon as the last stitch had been made and the last thread severed, Emotte bundled the excited, giggling girls away with vague promises that they should see the bride dressed on her wedding day. And with that shimmering creation delicately shrouded from the dust, our tensions relaxed and we sat for a while about the fire and talked, Joanna, her aunt and I. Like a family reunited we spoke of the storm, of their recent fears for Master Fermor’s safety, of our deep concern for Nicholas Thayne, of the poor Queen. Knowing my professional interest, they described for me a masque which they had seen performed at Northampton castle, and then questioned me about the rumours they had heard of Anne Boleyn’s marriage.

  “I would not choose to be married in the same week as that woman!” exclaimed Joanna. And the words reminded Emotte of some wedding feast detail which she had forgotten—or at least she said they did—and, making a note on the tablets hanging from her girdle, she went hurrying from the room.

  “In truth,” added Joanna, as the door closed sharply behind her, “I would not choose to be married at all.” As our eager conversation ceased she came back piteously to the present, and all the brightness suddenly went out of her. “I would not have believed I could be so wretched here in my mother’s home where I used to be so happy as a child—with my father delayed abroad just when I need him most—and my betrothed discussing the advisability of our union much as Jordan discusses the mating of our herds in the stockyard.”

  The things I muttered about Oakham Skevington were quite unfit for her to hear, but the strained look on her face broke into a smile. “Oh, Will, I am so thankful you have come!” she cried. “I have so hungered for you!”

  She must have risen, and taken a quick, involuntary step towards me, and, quicker still, I had crossed the hearth and had her in my arms. “Every day—every night—every hour—since I left Neston I have hungered for you, my little love,” I vowed thickly, against the gold of her hair.

  To my joyful amazement she clung to me every whit as eagerly as I pressed her sweet body against my own. And presently she lifted her tear-stained face from my breast. Her eyes searched mine. “Do you think that either law or Church will really find some objection to the marriage on the grounds of consanguinity?” she asked.

  “No,” I said bluntly, not knowing how far I brought comfort or humiliation. “All this digging up of connections by marriage and objections to marriages is far-fetched nonsense forced into the public mind by the King’s divorce.”

  “Yet I pray they can persuade my father that there is,” she sighed.

  I held her sweet face between my hands and gazed down at her lips as if to draw the last vestige of truth from them. “You would rather go back to Neston—unwed?”

  “A thousand times.”

  “You have thought of the gossip there would be?”

  “I know. But I cannot—cannot marry that man.”

  Reason fled from me. “Nor any man?” I persisted.

  She would not answer, so I lifted her chin between my fingers so that her eyes must give the denial which her lips would not speak. And a surge of happiness consumed me, for what I read in their warm responsiveness wiped out all past loneliness and longings. I would have kissed them in passionate gratitude, but Joanna was mature now, not only with a woman’s understanding response to passion, but with a woman’s common sense and a background which gave her knowledge of the ways of the world. “If only my father could be persuaded to this,” she murmured, as if dismissing the impossible. Tenderly, compassionately, she placed forbidding fingers against my demanding mouth, reluctantly she tried to free herself from my embrace. And suddenly, rather wildly, I began to laugh.

  “What, in the name of sorrow, can you find for mirth?” she demanded, indignantly.

  “That priest—down in the hall,” I spluttered.

  “What priest?”

  “From St. Magdalen’s, Milk Street. He is waiting to marry you to someone, but no one seems to know that he is here. He said just now—that it was unlucky—”

  “What is unlucky?”

  “That I should rush upstairs to see the bride. But rather let us say it is lucky that I put
on my best suit to do so. You see, my love, he thinks I am the intended bridegroom.”

  “Will! Are you crazed?” she cried, her mind quick as ever to follow mine.

  “No. Just a clever opportunist, as the King is always saying. Do you not see, Joanna? We could call him up here. He has his breviary. He is only too anxious to marry some happy pair. Emotte and one of those romantic girls could be our witnesses. And by the time your father comes there would be nothing left to argue about.”

  Her eyes lit up. She no longer struggled against the temptation of my demanding arms. “You mean—this willing priest instead of Father Thayne—and you instead of Oakham?” She scarcely breathed the magic words. By springing the suggestion on her, by not giving her time to think about her father, I think I could have persuaded her. Of course I was crazy, as a man light-headed with hunger is crazy. I had no house to take a bride to, no assured income, no honoured name to give her. But, in the end, it was not those indisputable material facts which stopped me.

  It was the reminder of Father Thayne, and the memory of words which he had spoken several years ago. I seemed to stand again in Jordan’s room at Neston with the six golden sovereigns belonging to her father in my outstretched palm, struggling with temptation.Through the long waves of memory I heard my confessor’s warning words, “There is one dragon which you have slain, Will. But there are more subtle ways in which you could cheat a good master than by stealing money.” And this was one of them, with the fiercest dragon of all waiting to devour my trustworthiness or be slain.

  God knows how hard I fought to damp down the consuming fires of my blood—fires all the hotter because more than most men I had kept myself for her. I took my hungry hands from her and forced myself to let her go. White-faced and mirthless we looked at each other, and at the gulf of worldly circumstances which separated us.

  There was nothing more to say—or rather, nothing more which either of us dared say—and mercifully our silence was shattered and our decision made sure by a clatter of horses on the cobbles outside, by a barking of dogs and a banging of doors, and by Emotte coming in to tell us that her brother had arrived. Or perhaps, dear understanding woman, to warn us.

  In the general excitement she had left the solar door wide. We heard Master Brown come out from the great hall to welcome him, and the returned traveller’s happy, hearty greeting to his brother-in-law. “I do not know which were rougher—the Channel waves or the Kentish roads!” he was saying laughingly as his brother-in-law’s servants clustered round to take his cloak and baggage. “And to leave you and your people to make all the preparations for tomorrow— Why, John, my son, it is good to see you.” Presently we heard Master Skevington greeting him half apologetically, as they passed into the great hall, and then a low murmuring of his voice and of Oakham’s. But there was no reciprocal argument, no explosion of wrath as we had expected. Only Richard Fermor’s voice, cold and carrying, and without any trace of his former heartiness. “I hear what you say, Sirs, and will answer you. But I will see my daughter first.” And then his firm, quick step on the stairs.

  When he came into the upstairs room we had none of us moved—prompted, perhaps, by a feeling that it might have been in some way deceitful to have done so. He had endured a stormy Channel crossing, and all the way from Dover he must have ridden hard. There were tired lines about his eyes, and for the first time I noticed a sprinkling of grey at his temples. He threw a brief word of greeting to his sister, but his shrewd, searching gaze went straight to Joanna.

  For once she did not run into his arms. All demonstration of affection must have been curbed by the half guilty thought that she had too recently been held in mine. And no one but a zany could have failed to see that she had been weeping. “Your Uncle John seems to have been having trouble with these Skevingtons—” he began.

  But there was something, in my defence, which she wanted to make clear first. “I wanted Will Somers to come here,” she said, direct in her complete honesty.

  “So I went to Whitehall this morning to tell him,” added Emotte, completing the circle of love’s defences.

  He cast one quick, appraising glance at me. He might well have questioned what the devil I was doing there. But he was that type of man who, having once put aside even a half-justified suspicion, would have to be hard driven to niggle with it again. “A good thing you both have a well-proven friend about you at this time,” he said briefly. And in that illuminated moment I knew how abysmally low I should have felt had I stolen his daughter.

  “I suppose you have been weeping because Oakham Skevington was a party to these trumpery objections. Do you still want to marry him?” he asked brusquely. Either he was hurt because she had not embraced him or he was an extraordinarily angry man.

  Joanna shook her head, unable to speak.

  “But all the preparations are made—the meats cooked, the guests invited,” faltered Emotte, trying to warn her, as I had done, of the foolishness a woman must inevitably feel returning home unwed. “Even that lovely bridal gown with the satin specially fetched from France—”

  “It will keep,” said the man who had paid for it, shortly. “You have always been a dutiful daughter, Joanna, trusting me to do what I think best for you. You would have been entirely happy, I believe, in that first union I arranged for you with the Browns’ young cousin—God rest his soul! You had the same background.As adventurous young men his father and I had fought together in the wars. But now with this Skevington match I am not sure.…” He crossed the room and lifted Joanna’s unhappy face towards his own. “For your dead mother’s sake as well as yours I must know. Are you hurt only in your pride, or in your heart? If I stop this marriage, as I have a mind to do, do I strike a blow at you, or only for my own stubborn Fermor pride? Do you want to marry the man?”

  She looked straight back into his searching eyes, and was able to do so, thank God, without shame. “No, Sir. And now less than ever,” she said, yet withholding from him the whole reason.

  “Then you do not have to,” he said. “Stay here, both of you, while I deal with them.”

  Without so much as stopping to kiss her he strode downstairs again and, not having been included in his command, I followed him at a discreet distance. I suppose the Reverend Thaddeus Morton, tired of waiting, must have left shortly before he came. But by the great carved newel post at the bottom his brother-in-law, John Brown, awaited him. “That all this unpleasant tarradiddle should have happened in my home, which is ever yours and hers, Richard!” he was saying, in a low voice.

  Their hands and arms met in a warm clasp of understanding friendship. “I only regret that you should have been so harassed, John. But if you will allow me still further to abuse your hospitality by letting me use your street door as if it were indeed my own, I promise you we shall soon be well rid of them.”

  They went together into the great hall and, unnoticed, I flattened myself just inside against the serving screen. What went on there mattered more to me than to any other man. Brief as it was, I would not, for all my hopes of Heaven, have missed the scene that followed. For sheer surprise drama John Thurgood and I could never have touched it. But to me, with half my heart upstairs with Joanna, it was more than impersonal showmanship. It was the future of the woman I loved.

  Richard Fermor went and stood with his back to the roaring fire, hands thrust beneath his short, swinging cloak. Firelight flickered on the plain richness of his travel-stained clothes and on the jewelled dagger at his Florentine leather belt. I recognised the familiar stance which he adopted when other merchants tried to get the better of him with some nefarious deal. The little lawyer chose that moment to clear his throat and start shuffling his papers, but Fermor waved him aside. “I thought, Skevington, that we had gone carefully into this matter of our children’s betrothal months ago when it was first mooted?” he said.

  “Quite, quite, my dear Fermor,” agreed his new shipping partner propitiatingly. “But in the warning light thrown upon these matters
by the royal divorce I thought perhaps we should be well advised to—to—”

  “To discuss the close connection there would be between Joanna and myself through my sister’s marriage into the Brown family—” concluded Oakham, a shade too eagerly.

  While the younger Fermor hovered indecisively on the edge of the group, his uncle ranged himself quietly beside the older Fermor. And I thought, “This is where the real wordy battle begins.” But there was really no argument at all. In fact, no one really spoke except the bride’s father. No one had much chance to.

  “Being neither a philanderer nor a weather-vane myself, I have no desire for further discussion,” he said. “Northamptonshire is full of promising young men who want to marry my daughter, and whose fathers’ manors are more conveniently near my home. And it seems,” he added, rounding on the reluctant bridegroom, “you never were much to Joanna’s taste.”

  “But our shared contracts—our ships—and that new Venetian deal—” spluttered the older Skevington, realising too late perhaps how much was bound up in this marriage and how the goodwill of his foreign markets had improved since his new business partnership.

  Richard Fermor’s anger was a heart-warming thing to see. “By St. Blaise!” he cried, using the oath of the wool-combers’ saint, “you can keep your ships and I will keep my daughter,” and his voice must have carried to the listening women upstairs. “Not for all the gold in the Indies would I let your dithering son have her now. When she marries it will be with a man who wants her beyond all doubt, and who is prepared to outface royal fashion to keep her. And now, with my brother-in-law’s leave, I will wish you good-night, Sirs. And you, you quibbling quill scratcher, get out, too,” he added to the unfortunate lawyer. “I am tired from my journey, but my own legal man will see you in the morning about all matters resulting from my broken partnership.”