At the King's Command

by Susan Wiggs

  “Dame Krissie said my father had married a filthy gypsy.”

  “I am gypsy by adoption. And I know many gypsies. They are no cleaner or dirtier than anyone else.”

  Oliver coughed absently. “You talk funny.”

  “Then you should laugh at me.”

  “Not that sort of funny,” he said impatiently. “I mean you sound odd.”

  “English is not my mother tongue. I first spoke Russian, and then Romany, the language of the gypsies. Some of your words are hard for me to say. Perhaps you could help me.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why should I?”

  “Everyone needs help, Oliver. We should all help each other.”

  “I don’t want a mother,” he said abruptly.

  “Everyone needs a mother, too.”

  His fingers, with the nails chewed low, plucked at the counterpane. “I’ve never had a mother.”

  “Well, I have never had a little boy. Perhaps we should not worry about that. Perhaps we should simply agree to be friends.”

  He tucked his chin against his chest and mumbled something.

  “What did you say?” she asked, beginning to ache at the way he huddled on the bed, pale and withdrawn and distant.

  He drew a deep breath, then wheezed a little as he tried to expel it. He glared. “I said, I’ve never had a friend, either.”

  Juliana caught her breath. She looked quickly away, blinking fast to conquer the tears that pressed at the backs of her eyes. And even as she fought to subdue her sadness, she felt a little lick of rage leap to life inside her. What in God’s name could Stephen be thinking, hiding the lad away like this?

  She tamped down her anger, tucked it away to unfurl later, when she would not frighten the boy.

  “Oh, Oliver,” she whispered, and she barely got the words past the lump in her throat. She had failed to get hold of herself after all. When words deserted her, she did the only thing she knew to give comfort. She hugged him hard and close, his warm cheek against her chest. Her heart broke for this strange, pitiful boy who lived alone in a world of his own. “Oliver, what is the matter?”

  “Don’t … touch … me!” he half shouted, half wheezed. His eyes were bright, the color a more vivid blue than they had been a moment earlier. With a great whoop, he sucked in air, then seemed to struggle to let it out. A thin wheeze escaped him, yet he still seemed to be struggling to exhale.

  The lad was air-hungry, strangling; his eyes lost focus and rolled while a gurgling sound rose in his throat. He tore off his bedshirt as if the garment were a prison. With each desperate breath, he sucked in the skin below his breastbone and between his ribs.

  “Dame Kristine!” Juliana shouted. “Come quickly! Oliver needs you!”

  Dame Kristine pounded up the stairs, burst into the room and rushed to the cupboard. Bottles and crockery clinked as she gathered up medicines and instruments.

  Still gasping, Oliver shrank against the headboard. Horrendous hives peppered his neck and chest. It was not simply inhaled air that he was trying to expel, but the panic, too, as if it were a demon to be exorcised.

  Dame Kristine shot an outraged look at the wide-open window and slammed it shut, the panes shaking. Then she set a flame to a bag of herbs in the brazier by the bed. Noxious smoke filled the air, and around the smoldering leaves she placed three small, shallow glass cups.

  “What set him off?” she asked briskly.

  Juliana coughed at the rank odor of the burning herbs. “I—I embraced him.”

  Dame Kristine scowled through the thickening smoke. “What do you mean, you embraced him?”

  Juliana crossed to the bed. Some of Oliver’s exhalations were long and labored; others were short and shallow. She had never in her life felt so helpless. Despite what had happened earlier, she yearned to smooth a white-blond lock of hair from his brow.

  “I held him close.” She dropped to her knees and gazed intently into his eyes. The terror was buried so deep she knew she could not reach him. “I am sorry, Oliver,” she whispered while the voice inside her begged him to stay with her, pleaded with him not to be sucked down by the fear.

  “Oliver, I have never met a boy like you. I didn’t know you did not like to be touched. Dame Kristine is here and she is fixing some medicine. Come back to us.” Juliana stayed there until her knees ached. She stayed until they went numb. She kept up a gentle endless patter reminiscent of the way she would speak if she were trying to calm a skittish colt.

  Oliver’s fear-filled gaze clung to her, and she dared not even blink for fear of losing him.

  Then she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “My lady, it is over.”

  No! Juliana screamed inside. “He cannot be …” She choked back a sob.

  “The attack, my lady. Master Oliver’s breathing is better now.”

  At last Juliana began to understand what Stephen endured every minute of every day. The unbearable apprehension, the uncertainty. A careless word by a servant could send Stephen into a panic.

  “Oliver?” she whispered. “You are feeling better, yes?”

  “Yes,” he said in a thin voice.

  Dame Kristine busied herself with the tray of instruments. Oliver’s face showed only blank disinterest as he lowered the twisted bedclothes and turned over on his stomach.

  His ribs stood out like a starveling’s, and his skin was nearly as pale as the bleached linen sheets. Horrid scars in a sinister pattern scored his back. He turned his head to the side and asked, “Is it to be the leeches or the cups this time, Dame Kristine?”

  Dame Kristine sucked her tongue, her manner brisk. “Cupping, I think. Lie still now …”

  She worked with the deftness of long habit, drawing a thin knife along Oliver’s left shoulder and placing a hot cup over the wound. Juliana stayed on her knees in a state of horror and awe as Dame Kristine made two more cuts.

  The herbal smoke hung like a blue-gray shroud over the room. A pounding began in Juliana’s ears and a soft moan escaped her.

  “Never seen a cupping before?” Oliver asked in a flat, chillingly adult tone.

  “No.”

  “You look greensick.” Mischief gleamed in his eyes. “Maybe Dame Kristine has something in the cupboard for you.”

  Realizing that this was an attempt at jesting, Juliana forced herself to smile. “Not today. I think my humors are properly balanced.”

  He drifted off to sleep, and the hives on his skin faded away. Dame Kristine put up her medicaments.

  “Will he be all right?” Juliana whispered.

  Dame Kristine gave a curt nod. “The spell passed more quickly than usual. He seemed to like having you here, talking to him.”

  Juliana tucked the coverlet over him. “Do you truly think it was my fault? He fought me when I touched him.”

  “He’s a prickly little thing. Hard to say what set him off.” They sat in the tidy kitchen, sipping small ale while Dame Kristine talked. For the past seven years, Oliver had lived here, visited nightly by his father and on occasion by an eminent physician. The lad had been bled, leeched, purged, dosed and bathed in every concoction imaginable, but none of the treatments seemed to stop the attacks.

  Stephen gave him toys and books and amusements—mechanical soldiers, a skin horse that made a whinnying sound, a model castle with a working catapult, a puppet theatre and a variety of games. The lad lived in a fairyland with every magical gift Stephen could bestow upon him.

  And yet Juliana was struck by the conviction that Stephen withheld the one thing the boy needed most—a father’s love.

  Jillie practically had to wrestle her into submission to keep her still long enough to dress her for supper.

  “Now, that’s a rare shade,” the maid said, touching Juliana’s cheek. “I’ve no label for it, but were I to give it a name, I’d not be far wrong to call it choler. What’s amiss, my lady?”

  Juliana patted her coif. “I must speak to his lordship about a matter. And it is impertinent of you to ask.”


  Jillie mumbled something under her breath.

  “What did you say?”

  In clumsy Romany, Jillie said, “Everyone doth something know which you have yet to learn.” Grinning, she reverted to English. “Now, if you’ll not be needing me again, milady …”

  Juliana could not help smiling. She squeezed her maid’s hand. “Go on with you, Jillie.” After she had left, Juliana’s smile lingered. Jillie Egan had never ventured farther than the village of Chippenham. But Rodion, it seemed, was bringing the world to her.

  She recalled Stephen’s warning about allowing Jillie to dally with a man who might break her heart. Indeed. As if her husband were an expert on the vagaries of romance.

  “Ah, Stephen,” she whispered to the empty room, “ ’tis you who have much to learn.”

  She squared her shoulders and went to find him.

  Twelve

  Stephen had been unable to concentrate all day. In his routine meetings with his steward and reeve, he had been vague and unfocused, barely attending to the details of management that usually fascinated him. Even his latest contraption—a pulley to open the main gate unattended—failed to hold his attention.

  A persistent dread had taken up lodging in him, and he could think of nothing save the reason why.

  Juliana had found out about Oliver.

  Against his will, Stephen remembered the day King Henry had revealed that he knew the secret.

  “It comes to me that you’ve been hiding something, my lord,” King Henry had said, his voice ringing to the rafters of the Presence Chamber.

  With his insides knotting, Stephen had knelt before the gold-canopied throne and waited for the king to continue.

  Henry waved a jeweled hand to banish his courtiers from the dais. He dropped his voice low and said, “Why did you not tell me that Meg’s son still lives?”

  Stephen had yearned to deny it, to tell the king he was mistaken. But the look on Henry’s face—stern, all-knowing, and just at the edge of royal fury—convinced him that it was time for the truth to emerge.

  “I … The lad is sickly. The physicians do not expect him to survive.” Oliver, Jesu, Oliver, forgive me.

  Henry had been silent for a few moments; then a look of cruelty hardened his black eyes. “Meg’s son. And is he your son, as well, my lord of Wimberleigh?”

  The question seared Stephen like a glowing brand. He longed to spring up and throttle his sovereign king. Instead, he held Henry’s attention with an unwavering stare.

  “The boy is mine, sire.”

  “Ah. And yet you gave it out that the child had perished when Meg died birthing him.”

  Stephen nodded, full of the old familiar feelings of shame. “I … it seemed simpler that way, sire. There was little chance that he would live. Even when he did, he was always so sickly that I feared each day would be his last.”

  Henry’s thick fingers had drummed on the figured wooden arm of his chair. “Indeed. And now, my lord?”

  “Oliver is deathly ill.” He narrowed his eyes and hoped to hide the glint of defiance. “His condition is the same … as Dickon’s was.”

  “Dickon. Named for the usurper, Richard of the house of York.” Henry’s fingers fell still. “My lord, you’ll doubt this, but I truly am sorry for what befell your elder son.”

  “You’re right, sire. I do doubt it.”

  “Marry, I thought you might. Still, I did not summon you here to reopen that old wound, but to discuss your other boy. Oliver, is that his name?”

  Stephen nodded. He burned to know who had told the king.

  “Oliver is the son of one of my most powerful barons,” Henry said, stroking his red beard. “He should not be exempt from royal service. If other nobles found out, they, too, would demand special treatment.”

  “Sire, it is not beneath me to beg for mercy,” Stephen had said.

  “Beg for what?”

  A light, feminine voice hauled him from the dark depths of memory. He leaped to his feet as Juliana stepped into the room.

  “Madam,” he said icily, furious that he had spoken his remembered words aloud.

  She closed the door behind her. She looked, he could not help but notice, particularly comely in a peacock-colored skirt and matching bodice. Her hair was swept into a gold net to reveal the length and delicacy of her neck. “We must do something about Oliver.”

  “You are not to speak of him.” Stephen measured his words, aware that to betray too much emotion would give her even more power over him. “Not to me,” he continued, “not to your gypsy friends and most especially not to anyone at Lynacre.”

  Three brisk steps forward brought her to the edge of the table. “He is your son, my lord, and my stepson. I intend to speak of him anytime I wish.”

  He stood and grasped her shoulders, wrenching an exclamation of surprise from her. “I forbid it.”

  Rather than shrink from him as he expected her to do, she leaned closer still, so that their noses nearly touched. “Why?” she demanded.

  “Because the world isn’t safe for a boy like Oliver.” The black violence of rage swirled like a storm inside him. With an explosive motion of his arms, Stephen thrust her back.

  She stumbled, then regained her balance. He could not believe he had handled her so savagely. He felt the urge to apologize, yet she seemed unperturbed. Calm, even.

  “Stephen. I want to understand. What do you mean, the world is not safe for him?”

  “Life is hard enough for a strong, hale lad. If people knew about Oliver, there would be … expectations.”

  “What sort of expectations?”

  “He’d be required to go to court. It’s bad enough that the king knows. If Cromwell ever found out, he’d goad Henry into summoning Oliver.”

  “That seems quite an honor. Court—”

  “—is what killed his brother, you meddlesome harpy. I told you that. Dickon was smaller than the other boys. They played cruel tricks on him, teased him about his weakness. If Dickon ever felt the honor of serving at court, it was crushed by petty rivalries that would challenge even a healthy boy.”

  Stephen turned sharply away, pounding his fist on the window embrasure and staring furiously at the rolling landscape beyond. Far in the distance, Kit and a gypsy girl in a red skirt rode bareback across the fells. There were moments when he hated Jonathan Youngblood’s son, hated the boy’s high good health, his easy, athletic grace. Yet at the same time he thanked God for Kit, who was living proof of the sweetness of life.

  He heard Juliana walk closer to him and felt a jolt of surprise. He had expected her to depart. In tears. Why shouldn’t she, after the insult he had flung at her?

  Instead, she touched him. At first Stephen was too startled to react. Her warm hands found the small of his back and traveled upward slowly, tenderly, until they found the knots of tension in his shoulders. Her caress was compelling, her hands deft and sure. She knew the soothing power of a human touch on aching flesh. Knew the strange bond that formed when two creatures united in mutual need, one hurting, the other healing.

  “Stop,” he said in a low, outraged whisper.

  “No.”

  “Juliana …”

  “Turn and look at me, Stephen. Turn and tell me you want me to go away.”

  He swung around, and her hands migrated to the tops of his shoulders and the sides of his neck. His tongue felt thick, and he forgot what she wanted him to say.

  “I command you to forget Oliver. Leave him to those who have cared for him all these years. He’s dying, Juliana.”

  “We are all dying, Stephen. No one has ever escaped this world with his mortal life.”

  He had no ready answer for that. He found himself caught in the depths of her eyes. How green they were—not a hard emerald or jade but soft and luminous like new leaves with the sun glowing behind them.

  “Stephen?”

  He blinked, realizing he had been staring into her eyes as if deep within her dwelt a place he yearned to go. Onl
y with great effort did he summon the words that would distance him from her once again.

  “The matter of my son is closed, Juliana. He is to remain as he is, and you are to forget you ever saw him.”

  “Forget I have a stepson?” The simplicity of her question rendered Stephen’s command ridiculous.

  He raked a hand through his hair. “What I mean is, leave him be. Let him have peace, Juliana.”

  “My lord, I can’t claim to know a great deal about little boys. But I do know that they do not crave peace.”

  Her words awakened memories in Stephen—of Oliver’s first toothless smile, his first wobbly steps, his first words. But the milestones were slain by the darker remembrances: the episodes of wheezing that left the lad exhausted and weak, the fevers that raged for days and nights. The illness was like a demon, lurking in the shadows and then springing out to fling Stephen into black, impenetrable despair.

  “I know what is best for my son,” he said through gritted teeth. “You are not to interfere with him.”

  “He lives like a hermit.”

  “He has everything a boy could want and more,” Stephen snapped. “A garden. A houseful of playthings. A caring, attentive and learned servant.”

  “And a father?” Juliana asked in a voice so soft Stephen thought he had heard wrong. “Does he have a father?”

  “Of course he has a father!” The words exploded from him, causing her to jump back. “I go to him every evening and sometimes during the day, as well. Were I like most men, I’d foster him out to some other family and see him only once a twelvemonth.”

  “If you were like most fathers,” she shot back, “you would touch him, hold him close instead of keeping him hidden away!” She poked a small finger at his shoulder. “How long has it been, my lord, since you took that child in your arms, kissed him and told him that you love him?”

  The words lashed at Stephen. Never. The truth gave a razor edge to the sting. How could he show a rough-and-tumble affection for Oliver? The boy was too fragile, too excitable. He could die during one of his attacks.

  “I won’t be judged by you,” Stephen said furiously. “This illness could take him at any moment. It will claim him all the sooner if you persist in meddling with him.”