The Deception of Consequences

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “Well, he may be a fool but he’s always been able to look after himself damn well in the past.” Sir Walter regarded each woman, eventually smiling at Alba and coming forward to take her hand. “Madam. Forgive my intrusion, and my questions. But I have been worried for some days. Has there truly been no word of any kind whatsoever?”

  “Not from him, sir,” Alba replied. “Nor from our dearest Jemima.”

  “Ah,” said Sir Walter. “I hadn’t realised. In that case, the mystery is solved.”

  Ysabel repeated her words of before. “Master Wolfdon had no idea where Jemima had gone,” she assured Sir Walter. “But then he left within the hour.”

  Sir Walter paused, managed to smile, and turned again to Alba. “Well, Madam, perhaps I must leave my step-son to his own strange choices. Soon it will be Epiphany, and with your permission, I will come the following morning to wish you well since many now say the new year should be counted, you know, from the first day of January, instead of the previous count of the Lady’s Day in March.”

  Flattered, Alba turned frown to deep smile. “I would be delighted, sir.”

  “And,” Sir Walter continued, “the next tournament, you know. We’ve discussed this before, and I’ll take it amiss should you turn me down now. Already arranged for the twenty fourth day of January, and the king himself will enter the lists. I plan to take you as my companion, mistress, even though Mistress Jemima may not now be with us.”

  “She may have returned by then,” added Ysabel. “Indeed, I most certainly hope so.”

  “In which case, she will be welcome to accompany us,” Sir Walter said.

  “And Dickon too,” Peter muttered, “if he’s deigned to return, or let us know what the devil he’s doing.”

  Sir Walter raised a dismissive hand. “If he wishes to keep his head attached, then he should be careful not to anger his king.” He turned, summoning Peter to him. “But yes, yes, we’ll be back indeed, both for yourselves, my dears, and in the hope of finding Richard returned.” He looked once more to Alba. “Madam, should my step-son arrive here, please tell him I am waiting for news and expect a visit within the day.” He walked to the doorway, Peter once again following. “I shall wish you continuing cheer in the Christmas season and will return soon.” And was gone.

  Alba sighed. “No one knows anything at all. It is troubling. Disconcerting.” She blinked. “Positively infuriating.”

  The court shimmered in the Christmas season, busy with arrivals, feasting and gatherings for jugglers, mummers, plays and pageants. New clothes were delivered, the finest gowns, doublets and cloaks of the past brought out of their chests and brushed down, fitted with new ribbons, and hung in the garderobes to eliminate any lingering moths, maggots or flea eggs. Life reached its zenith and every moment was to be enjoyed, for there were only a few days left before the highlights drifted into forgotten shadow.

  Her majesty stared at the group of women, bored, restless and entirely ignoring the stitchery which lay across her lap. The huge chamber, her own private domain within the palace, was crowded with women, pages, one lone minstrel whose music barely echoed through the buzz of speech and laughter, and the whine of her new pet dog.

  “Little Minx may be hungry, my lady.”

  The queen looked up. “Yes. Take him away. Feed him. Be – affectionate. I dare not love him as I should.” She looked down again to her lap. The stitchery had fallen and the stretched silks of her under-gown twitched, as though hiding a living thing. Her majesty rested her hands, palms down, across the tiny lurch and heave. For a moment she stared, caressing through the deep silken damask. When she looked up again her frown had gone and her dimples were alight. “I dare not love my little dog. But I shall save all my love for my child. He will be the light of my life.” Her smile widened. “Even his majesty will love him, He will be so proud of his son.”

  Someone whispered, “Or his daughter.”

  Anne pointed. “He already loves his daughter. Say it. You know it. No one must ever doubt it.” She looked once more down at the soft movement in her belly. “But he’ll love his son more. He needs an heir.”

  “Your majesty, it isn’t long before your lying-in. We will pray for the birth to be painless, and the child to be a son.”

  Anne looked away, reached down to retrieve her stitching, and recoiled, breathless.

  The women clustered, speaking together, or walked in groups with a wafting sweetness of lavender perfumes and the scent of rose-water. Standing behind her queen, one asked, “Majesty, are you in pain?”

  Another clasped her ringed fingers around the white fur rump of the hopeful puppy. “I’ll mix the little one some bread and milk. Later he can have the scraps from the table. I think it too cold to let him out to play in the snow. But his big brown eyes plead with you, your majesty. It’s you he loves.”

  “Take him out. Let him run. He loves the snow. But don’t let the king see him.”

  “His majesty can hardly care, madam, for a little creature no bigger than his hand.”

  The queen shook her head. “He killed my sweet innocent Purkey,” she whispered. “Only a year ago, and just before Christmas although it was no celebration. I adored that little dog. I miss him. His majesty was – I shouldn’t say – but crazed. Perhaps mad. Henry called my puppy a traitor and a witch. He strangled the dog and threw him from the window. I cried – for weeks. He mustn’t see my new puppy. I won’t risk another wild fit of cruelty.”

  “Your majesty, I shall keep Little Minx safe.”

  “But who,” thought Anne, “will keep me safe?”

  Mistress Jemima Thripp entered Dover with as little notice as was possible. The weather was calmer and the snow was melting from the streets. The streets were a little wider than those Jemima knew from London, but the tiny houses bent over, their top storeys almost meeting across the cobbles far below, their windows often blinded by the mists that so often rolled in from a hazy blue horizon. Puddles now replaced white shimmering peaks, and yesterday’s footsteps could no longer be seen and followed. But a sharp briny wind whistled from the ocean and discovered every opening, every alleyway and every unshuttered window. It gusted down chimney and flew out the flames below. It toppled piled buckets or pots ready for market, and lashed up sheets spread to dry on the hedges. Every building gazed resolutely inland, but the streets led down to port and the unloading of the ships that brought Dover its bustling prosperity.

  The town square was empty and frost rimed the cobbles. It was the twenty seventh day of December, and for those few modern-leaning souls who now counted each new year from the first day of January, it was the ebbing death of the year 1535 and very nearly the dawning of the year 1536.

  The Sleepy Oyster rose three storeys and its windows faced obstinately away from the coast, while the stable block was sheltered behind a high wall. Calling out the innkeeper, two chambers were requested, to be allocated to three men and one woman. A jumble of names was offered

  “Travelling folk? No, not as such,” answered Gerard when asked. He addressed the innkeeper with a forced smile. “The little lass be my niece. We come from the Stubbs Farm just over the other side o’ the county. But my brother is due to sail back from Calais any day, and my niece, well, she wants to greet him.”

  “Won’t be no ships come sailing into port in this weather,” objected the innkeeper.”

  Gerard scratched his head. “Which be why we might have to hole up here for a few days. But my brother’s a right courageous man and will brave the winds to be home for Epiphany, right and tight, bringing gifts for his wife and daughter. For a practised seafaring man, tis only a short distance across the brine.”

  “There’s bin storms.”

  “But the captain’s a grand sailor and will steer his ship home, don’t you worry. And my little niece, Mistress – J – Joanne Stubbs – she don’t mind waiting.”

  “The smallest bedchamber on the first storey then, for the little mistress. And a larger one along the corridor
for you three.”

  “With doors that lock.”

  “They all do,” Gerard was told. “This be a busy port and ships come from all over. Plenty of Frenchies come here too. So we don’t risk chambers that don’t lock safe and tight.”

  They ate downstairs in the long chamber leading between kitchens and drinking room, where a trestle table and benches were set up. The Sleepy Oyster, a profitable house serving traders, sailors and folk coming to market from some distance, prided themselves on a good kitchen. The food was plentiful enough, and hot, having been carried directly from the ovens next door.

  Gerard, Samuel and Alfred ate, chewed loudly and talked rather more quietly. Jemima, head down to her platter, said little. She was tired, cold and had long regretted the excited loyalty which had led her to offer all the help her father needed to reclaim his property. Even though she had her doubts as to whether it really was his rightful property, loyalty outweighed suspicion. Discovering her father alive and cheerful had been exhilarating and nothing could have stopped her agreeing to anything he wanted. The long freezing road and the companions she now loathed had taught her differently. Deciding that her father should never have asked her to agree with such a dangerous mission only made her more depressed. Jemima spooned minced lamb, pottage and radish soup until she could eat nothing more, pushed the custards away towards the men who were still eating, and declared that she was exhausted and wished to rest.

  She kept her voice low. “It’s you who know where to go from here. You start whatever needs to be done. I have to sleep in a warm bed for an hour at least.”

  “You don’t talk of that here, mistress,” glowered Gerard. “If we talks at all, then we talks in our chamber, or yorn.”

  “I’ll not be inviting you into my bedchamber,” Jemima glowered in return. “No one can hear us now. The place is empty.”

  “Sleep well, mistress,” Sam interrupted. “I’ll ask the scullery maid to knock on your door when we needs you.”

  Jemima placed her napkin and spoon on the table, nodded and turned. She brushed down her skirts, breathed deep, and hurried to the inn’s entrance where keys hung on hooks by the door. The innkeeper, wiping his hands on his apron and beaming over his moustache, was speaking with a newly arrived customer.

  Jemima waited, then asked, “The key, if you please. For Mistress Jemima Thripp’s chamber.”

  The innkeeper stared. “Who’s that, mistress? You needs another room? Ain’t you the lass came with the three gents eating at the table right now?”

  She blushed. “I am. The key, if you please.”

  “Mistress Stubbs, then,” nodded the man and passed the key. Jemima ran up the stairs and collapsed on her narrow bed in a breathless heap. She slept, but she cried for some time first.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  It was in the night that it happened. There was just a slight noise, but the first tiny careful creek woke Jemima. She only had time to open her eyes and blink.

  Three men grabbed her, one hand clamped hard and cold over her mouth, the covers were thrown back and her legs, kicking wildly, were grabbed first at each ankle and then pulled, thumbs sharp into the back of her calves, and a fury of dark faces staring so closely to hers that nose touched nose.

  She wore only her shift, but blessed that decision, having been wary of Gerard or one of the others knocking for her without warning, not to sleep naked as she usually did. One loose linen chemise, however, brought little respectable coverage. Nervous of her companions, she had also hidden her father’s knife beneath her pillow and its heavy steel and protruding hilt had at first interrupted her sleep. But now she had no chance to grab for it and had no way of protecting herself.

  It was rape she feared first, with rough and calloused hands on her bare legs, and hot breath on her breasts. Dragged first from the bed and then across the floorboards, she squeaked and bit the hand that silenced her. Immediately another fist pounded into her jaw, her head rocked and rang, and she lost consciousness for those moments when, lifted beneath one long thick arm, she was carried bodily from the room.

  The door swung shut behind her. It’s lock had been cut, the hole sliced into the thick wood, and the metal keyhole now lay detached on the ground. Down the stairs, through the black and empty passageway, Jemima was hauled, face down. The immediate blast of freezing cold from outside brought her back to absolute awareness and complete terror. She swallowed bile, opened her mouth to scream, and was thrown heavily across the back of the horse waiting in the moonlight. She lost her breath, thumped down across the heaving flanks, instantly moving away into the night. Arse up, hair falling into her eyes, both arms caught behind her with a man’s huge paw pinning her wrists in his palm, Jemima discovered pain on a level she had never before experienced and felt like dead meat, a hind after the hunt, the kill carried back home for the pot. She knew her legs were half uncovered, she knew her shoulders were breaking, she knew herself trapped and she knew that either death or rape, and probably both, were approaching. There was no escape.

  The horse sped into a gallop. Her stomach thumped and throbbed as she was jolted, her arms jarred back hard against their joints, she was sure she would vomit and the blood rushed to her head. The headache slanted from neck to face to eyes and down her back, around her stomach, and curled like frozen pokers down her legs. She was blind, staring down desperately through her hair at the splash of ice from the flying hooves. Her mind dissolved into a jumble of incoherent attempts to understand and to think. It was some moments later that she fainted.

  She woke when, with a fist in her hair, she was tumbled from horseback to the ground, and lay, sobbing and gulping for breath while feebly attempting to pull the skirts of her shift down over her legs.

  “Not bad. Quite pretty. Loins for the taking,” said a voice, followed by laughter, and agreement.

  “Not yet,” said a deep voice. “The bitch is here for a reason, not just for pleasure.”

  Jemima sat up. It was still night and the moon was a clear half circle in unclouded blackness. A whisper of stars shrank back into a shrinking glimmer. There was no roof except the tree branches and no walls except the bushes. The floor was bare earth, swept clean from snow or puddles. A little camp fire crackled, scented with pine, flame bright and hot. Around it, and surrounding Jemima, was a crowd, too many to see or count in the darkness and the fire’s flare, of men seated on the ground and staring at her.

  The deep voiced man was stretched full length closest to the fire, ankles crossed, a blanket beneath him, his hands clasped behind his head. Jemima did not know him. The faces she could barely glimpse of the other men were also unknown to her. One said, “So we strip her? Thrash her? Threaten her?”

  “No,” said the man lying stretched, looking up narrow-eyed at the sky above. “We simply question her. This is Thripp’s daughter. She’s no enemy, and I want no continuing bloody war with Thripp.”

  Jemima bit her lip, glared at the bustle and snigger, poking fingers and fists in the pushing throng around her, cleared her throat from rising bile, and stared at the man who appeared to be their leader. “You’re Red Babbington.”

  And the man smiled, as if to a friend, unthreatened. “Of course I am. Welcome to my camp, mistress.” He paused, then said, “Hungry, lass? There’s roast pork and hot bread baked in the embers.”

  She shook her head and then wished she had not, since she was already giddy. She mumbled, “No. Not food. But I need explanations.”

  Babbington sat, unwinding from the ground like a snake rising to the threat. “Easy enough to guess, isn’t it, lass? You’ve found your father returned from the dead, or you’d not be here. And you know what happened to him, or you’d not be here. Finally, lass, you know where his stolen coin is stashed – or – quite simply – you’d not be here. He owed that coin to me, every penny of it. And that’s why I’m here, with you brought to me in my camp.”

  The crowd was quiet. No one interrupted while Babbington spoke. But there was a shiftin
g and attentive suspenseful breathing which rustled like a breeze through leaves.

  “So I have to tell you where my father’s hidden his treasure. Then you’ll take it and let me go.” Jemima stared at Babbington. His eyes were red in the firelight. His hair was red as flame and short cut, and the stubble around his jaw was a thorn-scrub of red whiskers. His eyebrows were dark red and his lashes pale. Although he sat, she thought him tall. Red hair was not unfashionable since the king’s was red tinged gold but she thought Babbington hideously ugly. She smiled. “There’s one problem with all of this. You see, I have no idea where my father’s possessions are hidden.”

  Babbington laughed, red throat and red tongue. “What a lie, little mistress. Tis not the right time, I’d think, to be enjoying the sea air for the fun of it, and the snow and ice fit to freeze a man’s cods. You’d be home welcoming your sweet Papa back into your life.”

  This time she managed to shake her head without feeling dizzy. “I’m here to collect his belongings and take them back to him, exactly as you guessed. But I came with those of his men who survived. They know the place. They didn’t tell me. I came because my father didn’t trust them to share true and fair.”

  The dark man who had originally suggested violence as a way to make her talk, suggested it again. His smile was wider than his few teeth allowed. “Beat the bitch. I’ll swive her afterwards.”

  Babbington gazed at Jemima. “I may allow that,” he said softly, “but later, when other more important matters are dealt with. Now, mistress, he said, leaning forwards, “I once respected your father. Thripp had a good enough name for a pirate and fraudster, criminal and thief. But within the business, where there are all of us just the same, Thripp was known as trustworthy. So I backed him. My hard won coin for him to hire men, feed and bribe them, stock his ship, careened and tarred, and ready stocked to the bilges with fighting men for a quick journey round the Breton cliffs to the Middle Sea, and the Spanish coast, ready to intercept the galleons back from the Americas, laden with whatever the Spaniards could steal from the natives. Gold, like as not.” He nodded, leaning back again, his hands behind his head. “The agreement was simple enough, with my backing coin to be paid back first, then a share of the gold and silver. Not a half share, I admit, since there was Staines in the deal. A quarter for me, a quarter for Staines, and the remaining half for Thripp to share ‘mongst his men and himself. A fair deal. The usual arrangement.”