Secrets at Court

by Blythe Gifford

‘The King’s emissary to His Holiness,’ she finished. Her eyes, fixed on him. ‘I know.’

  He shifted his stance, moving a step away. His mission was no secret, but her tone suggested she knew more of his news than the courtiers who had slapped his back in congratulations.

  He wondered what the Lady Joan had told her.

  ‘Then you know,’ he said, cautiously, ‘what a celebration this is.’

  She looked out over the room, without the smile he might have expected. ‘Not until they are wed in truth. Then, we will celebrate.’

  We. As if she and her lady were the same person. So they were close, this maiden and her lady.

  Why would Lady Joan choose such a woman as a close companion? If one discounted her lameness, this Anne would not draw a second glance. Perhaps, then, that was the reason. Perhaps the Countess wanted someone who would not distract from her own beauty.

  If so, she had chosen well.

  ‘Then let us hope we truly celebrate soon,’ he said. Celebrate and let him leave for the unencumbered life he wanted.

  ‘That will depend on you, won’t it?’

  Close indeed, if she had been told so much.

  He threw back the last swallow of claret. An unpleasant reminder of the task still before him. A waste of time, to look for things that had been proven to the satisfaction of God’s representative on earth long ago. ‘It will depend on how quickly the Archbishop can locate a dozen-year-old document.’

  ‘Is that all that must be done?’

  He certainly hoped so. ‘His Holiness can expect no more. Except to prick the King’s ease.’

  ‘And will it be difficult?’

  Full of questions. He glanced at the table at the end of the Hall. His answers, no doubt, would go directly to her mistress. ‘No.’

  ‘We are all just...’ The pause seemed wistful. ‘Ready for it to be over.’

  ‘As am I,’ he said. He felt like that Greek fellow. Hercules. One labour ended, another began. Surely he had reached his dozen.

  They exchanged smiles, as if they were old friends. ‘A few weeks only,’ he assured her. ‘Less, if I can make it so.’

  ‘You sound as eager for the conclusion as I. What awaits you, when all this is over?’

  Nothing. And that freedom was the appeal. ‘I will head back across the Channel.’

  ‘Another duty for the Prince?’

  He shook his head. He was done with duties and obligations. ‘Not this time. Rather a duty to myself.’ Bald to say it. He looked down at his empty cup. ‘And now, I leave you to the peace you sought here.’

  ‘Do not leave on my behalf. The Countess will have missed me by now.’ She took a step, steadying herself with her crutch.

  ‘Do you need help?’ He waved his hand in her direction. How did one assist a cripple?

  There was steel in her smile. ‘I do this every day.’

  Maybe so, he thought, but as she left, her lips tightened and her brow creased. Every day, every step, then, lived in pain.

  We are all waiting... Ah, yes. The Prince and Lady Joan were not the only ones depending on him for a quick resolution. So was her lady-in-waiting, he thought, as he watched her leave, rolling and swaying with her awkward gait.

  He wondered why she cared so much.

  * * *

  Anne made her way back to the dais, then waited until Lady Joan could break off and they could speak unheard.

  ‘So?’ Beneath the smile, her lady’s whisper was urgent. ‘What did he say?’

  Anne shook her head. ‘No suspicions.’ She had become sensitive to such things. Shrugs, tones of voice. It compensated for other weaknesses. ‘He gives little thought to the task except that it be over. He thinks that the Pope only wanted to create one final obstacle in exchange for his blessing.’

  ‘Yes, of course. That must be it. No other reason.’ Her lady breathed again. ‘All will be as it must. Now that we know, you must avoid Sir Nicholas.’

  She knew that. Knew she should for all kinds of reasons. But her stubborn, sinful ingratitude flared again. The resentment that boiled over when Lady Joan, kind as she was, demanded something in the tone she might use to a command her hound or her horse.

  No, she must be grateful. She nodded.

  Anne looked across the Hall at him. Tall, straight, well favoured, with eyes that seemed to pierce the walls.

  And able to move—oh, God, to move wherever he liked. Back to France for no good reason, as if it were as easy as walking into a room.

  She had learned to stifle her envy as she watched women dance on their toes, watched men stride without stopping. But when this stranger took her hand, it was not envy she felt.

  It was something worse. Attraction.

  She turned away. Maybe it was not this man, maybe it was all that surrounded her. The wedding, the minute-by-minute need that Joan and her Edward felt, as if each was the other’s air...

  That would never be hers, Anne knew, so she had never let herself want it. Never allowed her eyes to fall on a man and think of him that way. If she were so fortunate as to wed, it would be because some man had taken pity on her and agreed to carry the burden of her in exchange for beautiful stitching and a steady head. And if he did, she would, of course, have no choice but to be abjectly grateful.

  Her eyes sought him out again. No, she needed no encouragement to avoid Sir Nicholas Lovayne. She wanted no reminders of things that would never be hers.

  Chapter Three

  The next day, before dawn, Nicholas was mounted and recalculating the miles between the New Forest and Canterbury. His squire, Eustace, had arrived late in the day with the recovered horse. All was packed and ready, the steed beneath him as impatient as he.

  Light seeped through the trees.

  Prince Edward did not come.

  Instead, he sent a page with the news. The pestilence, that murderous giant, still lumbered in the land. The King forbade the journey, it seemed, until some other hapless soul could travel the route and return to pronounce it safe for his son and heir to traverse.

  Biting his tongue, Nicholas swung off the horse and left it for the squire to stable. Strange, the things men feared. Neither Edward the father nor the son had hesitated to face death on the field of battle, but the King had turned timid when he lost the last friend of his youth to The Death. Now, the monarch cowered in a forest, as if death could not find his family here.

  Nicholas would not run from death.

  It would come for him, as it came for all men. He had survived the war with the French, but there would be other wars to come. In Italy, or even the Holy Land.

  Deprived of his journey, Nicholas snapped at all around him like a hungry dog deprived of his bone. Restless, he left the hunting lodge, too small to comfortably hold even a temporary court, to prowl the grounds. He pulled three cloth balls from his pouch, juggling them to keep his hands busy, recalculating the miles to Canterbury and back.

  Eyes on his hands, mind on his task, he nearly tripped over Anne sitting on a small bench that caught the morning sun.

  Her needlework fell to the ground. She bent over, but he was faster, snatching it from the dirt more quickly than she could.

  Dusting her work off, he handed it back to her. ‘It seems that fetching your dropped items has become a habit of mine.’

  After the words had left his tongue, he realised how ill chosen they were.

  She took it without touching his fingers. No smile sweetened her sharp expression. ‘My thanks.’ Words without feeling.

  Now that the embroidery filled her hands again, her fingers flew in a way her feet never would and she bent to her work, ignoring him. A beautiful piece, though he was no judg
e of such things. Silver on black. Then, he recognised it. The Prince had used such a badge.

  He slipped his juggling balls into his pouch. ‘You prepare for their wedding.’ She did not look up from her stitches.

  ‘Do not tell the Prince. Lady Joan plans a gift to celebrate the wedding.’

  ‘I can be discreet,’ though he realised he had not been so with her last night.

  ‘I’m glad of it,’ she said, still bowed over her needle. ‘All will be as it must.’

  Strange words. ‘And how must it be?’

  Laughter escaped again. So unexpected. As if all the beauty and ease denied her body was lodged in her throat. ‘It must be as God, or my lady, wishes.’

  His life, captured in the words. All must be as the Prince, and the King, wanted. Horses to Calais. Wine across the Seine. Documents to Avignon. Always leave a way out. Always have an alternate route.

  He would have no more of the wishes of others.

  ‘And do God’s wishes align with those of the Countess?’

  A smile teased her lips. ‘Thanks to the Pope and to Sir Nicholas Lovayne, yes.’

  He could not help but smile. Yes, he was ready to be free of such demands, but as long as they were his, he would fulfil each one. Including this last. ‘So is there to be a magnificent wedding ceremony in Canterbury?’

  Anne shook her head and looked back at her needlework. ‘She wishes it to be done quickly.’

  ‘No pomp? No circumstance?’ No huge celebration of all his work? ‘She is of royal blood and marrying the future King. There has been no such wedding since...’ When? Before he was born.

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Appropriate to their station, yes, but she is wedding the man she wants.’

  ‘She wants?’ A much more urgent and earthy word than loves or even needs. One that conveyed a stiff staff and a welcoming hole. One uncomfortably like what he was feeling for the woman before him. ‘I persuaded the Pope to bend the laws of God for what she wants?’

  Words he should not have said. Her wide eyes told him so.

  ‘You were sent,’ she said, as if teaching a child, ‘because you could accomplish the task. You should feel humbly grateful for the trust placed in you.’

  ‘Grateful?’ No, that was not what he felt. Instead, it was that most serious of the seven deadly sins: pride. ‘I only hope it is worth the cost.’

  ‘To you?’

  A sharp tongue, this one. Sharp enough to puncture his moment of desire for her. Despite her lectures, she seemed no more humbly grateful than he.

  He cleared his throat and collected his wits. ‘To me it is, yes.’ Well worth it. Now, he would be free. ‘I meant worth the cost to them.’ The cost of the chapels alone was more than Nicholas would see in his lifetime.

  Her needle paused, for the first time, and she gazed beyond him, as if he had disappeared. ‘To be able to look at someone that way...?’

  ‘As if they cannot wait until darkness?’ His words were more than reckless, but, in just weeks, he would no longer be the Prince’s thrall.

  She shook her head. ‘It is more than lust.’

  That, he could not argue. It was madness. ‘The Prince is...’ Every word he tried sounded like an insult. The Prince acted like a man bewitched. His own father had looked so, when he married his second wife. Bewitched and blind to the truth of her.

  Anne gazed up at him, as if she understood the meaning he could not find words for. ‘Blissful. He is blissful. She is the same.’

  He shook his head. Bliss would not last. His father’s had not. ‘I have never seen him so before. But then, he has never been wed.’

  Now she looked at him, her eyes—what colour would he name them?—unwavering on his. ‘And she has? Is that your meaning?’

  As if she knew thoughts he easily hid from others.

  Did the woman speak so bluntly to the Countess? If so, she would not be a comfortable companion. ‘Have you recently come to her service?’ If so, perhaps she would not be there long.

  ‘No. I have been with her for a long time.’

  Perhaps through all the marriages, official and otherwise. Perhaps she could save him a trip to Canterbury. ‘Were you there when she and Thomas Holland wed?’

  She pricked her finger and popped it in her mouth. His gaze lingered on her lips longer than it should have. He was thinking of wants, of needs...

  ‘You are right,’ she said, finally, glancing down at the Prince’s badge, fallen again to the earth. ‘I seem to be ever dropping things at your feet. Could you hand it to me again?’

  For a moment, he could not look away from her lips. Thin, yes, but finely drawn, an apology from the Creator for what he had done to her leg.

  Nicholas forced his eyes away and picked up the needlework again, glad of the excuse to break his gaze, struggling to remember his thoughts.

  ‘Are you a juggler, Sir Nicholas?’

  He thought she had not noticed. ‘Only to amuse myself.’ He remembered now, as he returned her stitchery to her, his question. Had she wanted him to forget? ‘Her marriage to Holland. Were you there?’

  ‘Yes, of course. It was a quiet affair.’

  ‘I meant the first time.’

  She looked away. ‘The first time? Her marriage to Salisbury, you mean?’

  ‘No. Her first marriage to Holland. The secret one.’

  She pursed the thin lips. ‘I was but four. They did not have a babbling babe present.’

  He thought of her at four and smiled.

  She did not. ‘Now, as you have reminded me, I have duties to perform in the here and now.’ She put the needlework in a pouch and reached for her walking stick.

  ‘Let me...’ He reached to help her, still not knowing why, again resenting her for his discomfort.

  She turned a frigid gaze on him. ‘I have lived twenty-five years without your help. I do not need it now.’

  He gritted his teeth to hold back sharp words. ‘Then I shall not offer it again.’

  He watched her hobble away, anger mixing with guilt for thinking ill of her when he should be filled with pity.

  Yet pity was the last thing he felt. She wore her limp as proudly as a knight might wore his scars earned by prowess in war.

  No, he was feeling something else even more surprising.

  Want.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. He had been too long without a woman. On his trip to Canterbury, he’d make a detour to Grape Lane and find a woman with fair hair and lush lips and blue eyes who did not hurl prickly insults at him.

  Strange, he puzzled again, watching her stumble back to the lodge, for Lady Joan to keep such a woman with her, and not only because of her tart tongue. Typically, such persons were shunned, or discreetly kept out of sight. This woman, on the other hand, was ever close to her lady. And while she could not agilely leap to perform tasks, she seemed to be in charge of others who did.

  Well, he was not here to wonder about a lady-in-waiting. He was here to make sure the Prince could wed his lady love.

  After that, he’d be gone.

  * * *

  ‘Come, Anne,’ Lady Joan said, patting the bench beside her as Anne returned to her chambers. ‘Where have you been? We must speak of all that is to be done before the wedding.’

  Anne hobbled over to the bench and sank onto it, more tired than usual. Her first thought was to tell her lady that Nicholas had asked dangerous questions.

  Her second thought was to keep
that secret to herself.

  But her lady, speaking of the wedding, did not question further, so Anne pulled out her needle and thread and settled in to listen.

  Her lady demanded all her attention and more. She was as jumpy as a cat, Anne thought, prowling the chamber, speaking of one idea, then another, her fabled calm shattered.

  Lady Joan was unaccustomed to being without a man. When Thomas Holland had been gone to war, well, that was one thing. But he died late in December, in Normandy, she by his side. It had been a blur, those next weeks. Packing, moving back across the Channel. Anne had expected peace and mourning when they returned.

  But her lady was not a woman who could live for long without a husband. How many weeks had it been after they returned before she was looking for her next companion? Barely enough to mourn the man. And Joan was not only the most beautiful woman in England, she was also the most wealthy. She had her pick of men, clustered, pleading their cases.

  But she had waited for the best catch of them all. And a man she had known in the nursery.

  Anne had no opinion about Edward of Woodstock. She couldn’t afford to. Some tongues had wagged. The lusty widow. But if it had been Anne, the Prince would not have stirred her lust.

  Unbidden, she thought of Nicholas. He of the strong brows and the rugged nose and the lips that...

  She shook her head. The man’s lips were no longer of any interest to her unless they were speaking of something of interest to her lady.

  ‘We must craft the celebration carefully,’ the Countess was saying. ‘It must not be so gay that it dishonours those taken by the pestilence, yet it must be grand and appropriate to a future King and Queen.’ A perplexed pout quivered on her lips. ‘And yet, it is a ceremony for two who are already married.’

  ‘Not in the eyes of the Pope.’ Anne swallowed, wishing she could recall the words. She knew better than to speak so bluntly to her lady. Sparring with Sir Nicholas had made her tongue tart.

  Lady Joan blinked, as if her pet monkey had suddenly nipped her. ‘The Pope will get his chapels. All will be as it must.’