Constant Heart (9 page)

He only hoisted me up into the saddle rather rudely, made a stiff bow, and then turned on his heel and left.

Nicholas handed me my reins. “My lady, he is not the man you think he is.”

“Please do not tell me that he is less, for I do not know how I could bear it.”

The last thing I saw in leaving was Nicholas’s face. His eyes. Their gaze was softened by great pity.

Nicholas began to flay me with words as soon as we reached Lytham House. At least he waited until I had gained my chambers.

“You kick at her at every turn as if she were an unruly pup. Even the most obstinate of beasts can be trained. And she is not a beast, my lord, she is a lovely girl. To please you is her only wish.”

“Then she wishes for the impossible.”

“Truly, my lord? Are you truly such a misanthropist as that? Did Elinor leave you nothing in her going?”

“Do not speak to me of her.”

“I do not understand, my lord. It is not as if you had loved her.”

Love. “Nay. I committed a worse crime than that: I trusted her.

I trusted her and she turned me into a cuckold. Had she not lost all reason, then I could never have gotten an annulment. Parliament would only have laughed at me and instructed me to tie her up like some animal in heat to keep the mongrels from coming round.”

“So ’tis for want of trust you keep her at some distance, my lord?”

“Aye.” Trust was a valuable commodity at court. Traded by everyone, but possessed by no one. Its rarity was surpassed only by love. For love implied commitment, and how could any of us commit ourselves to any but the Queen? Love implied singularity, and how could any of us benefit another if our affections were bound to one in exclusivity? Love was never looked for and rarely found. When it was, it always ended badly. Far better not to confuse love with pleasure. That way, one could love the Queen with abandon and pursue carnal bliss, as exemplified by Essex, at leisure. I had learned my lessons. In both love and trust.

“Forgive me for asking, my lord, but how can you learn to trust her if you do not first learn to know her?”

“And that, you see, is why I will not know her. Find some other dead horse to beat.”

Still, the girl’s words haunted me during the dark of the night.

“My sole desire is to see your honor grow. . . . You must only tell me
what it is that you expect.”

How was it that at every turn she seemed to disappoint me?

By being beautiful? By being moldable? By desiring to be a wife I actually wanted? One that I needed? What was it that I expected?

I expected Elinor. That is what I expected. And if she met that expectation, then she could never fail to disappoint me.

8

A
t night, those first weeks at Lytham House, I dreamt of my home. Of King’s Lynn. When I woke from those dreams, I could still smell the sea in the air and hear the gulls cry. I could lick the corners of my lips and taste salt upon them. But I knew it was just the memory of my tears.

In London there was the River Thames and there were ships aplenty, but it was not the same. Where the sea winds sweetened the smells of King’s Lynn, there was no breeze stiff enough to cleanse the streets of London. And winds skimming up off the Thames brought the river’s own stink with them. Scavengers employed by the city’s wards wandered the streets, making certain that people were disposing of their refuse responsibly. There were public cisterns for emptying the contents of closestools and chamber pots. But still the streets were filled with ashes and kitchen stuffs. And though there were common privies aplenty, every alley was used as a latrine. Building crowded against building and together they all leant forward to meet at angles above the centers of the streets. There were corners in London the sun would never reach.

But there was one thing which enchanted me about the city: I loved the swans that floated on the river with their long elegant necks, ever curving, ever swaying, swimming about in games, like so many nobles upon the water. They were so populous that at times the wherries transporting people from one side of the river to the other seemed to part and swirl them into snowdrifts.

One day, as Joan and I were rowed to Southwark to stroll in Paris Garden, the lure of their down proved irresistible.

“May I . . . would they let me . . . pet them?” The oarsman had probably never heard a request more daft.

“Pet them? They’d let you feed them. Daresay they’d let you take them home, except see those nicks in its beak? There’s five.

Means that’s Her Majesty’s bird. She catches you, you’ll spend a year in Newgate.” He barked a laugh, then bent to rummage in a sack. “Here, lady.” He tossed a crust of bread onto my lap.

I reached out a hand to the swan and she reached out her neck toward me. She nuzzled my hand, looking for the crust, and allowed me to pet her for the briefest moment before taking possession of her prize and heading back to her game.

I wished all my hours could have been spent so pleasantly.

Most days I accompanied the earl to court. At least after that second disastrous appearance, he waited for me. And if he could not, then he made some provision for my transport.

In time I became accustomed to my role. It was not a difficult one to execute. I had only to stand, for the better part of the day, at court. Often there was dancing or other entertainment in the evenings. Occasionally there was a state dinner, presided over by the Queen, at which I would take my place at the table next to the earl.

I observed the swift changes in fashion that swept the court with the regularity of the tides. Had some lady worn a particularly pleasing shade of yellow with indigo? Then in the next days, the fashion was echoed by all the courtiers and their wives. Had some lord added extra buttons to his doublet? Then so did another, only he had them done up with emeralds. And another in rubies. And then a third had both emeralds and rubies worked into the hem of his cloak and a new fashion for cloaks had been created. I did not know how the Earth could contain enough jewels to supply Her Majesty’s court.

I also soon discovered that there was one lamentable gap in my training, one area in which I had been left ignorant: I had been told nothing of the life of a courtier. But then perhaps it was because there was nothing of substance to be told.

As I watched the court, day after day, I came to the conclusion that if it was the duty of the women of the court to display the wealth of their husbands, then it was the courtier’s job to seize every opportunity and turn it either to his advantage or to another courtier’s disadvantage. Did the others, like the earl, practice the courtly arts of dancing and playing music, jousting and leaping? I was certain that they did, for how else could they have given such brilliant displays of their talents? The monies lavished on clothing and accoutrements was astounding to my provincial eyes. Even more astounding was the fact that the expense was undertaken only so that the Queen might give the courtier an opportunity to spend even more money on leasing a crown estate or purchasing a monopoly. There seemed no end to the amount of time and monies exhausted for appearances’ sake alone. It was a way of life that seemed to produce nothing of worth and yet consume everything of value.

The first few weeks, when I returned to Lytham House to fall upon my bed in exhaustion from sheer boredom, Joan would rub my feet to draw out the aches.

We spoke to each other in whispers, never sure of who else might be listening. It seemed in this place that one could never be sure when they were being observed. The room could appear empty, then in the blinking of an eye it could be filled with servants. They appeared, silent as apparitions, and left the same way.

All but one. All but the slopswoman. She always seemed to be cackling to herself, muttering a tuneless song as she went about her unsavory task. Joan could perform a perfect imitation. She would run her fingers through her hairs to bedraggle them, and then she would draw her cheeks into her mouth, fold her lips into each other, and hobble around the room. The only thing she could not duplicate was the servant’s red, bulbous nose.

“You should not do such things, Joan!” I could hardly speak for laughing.

“Why? Do you fear my face will be stuck this way?”

“Aye. Nay! Stop—’tis unseemly!”

At that moment, the servant in question entered the room. Joan straightened, but the woman was ignorant of the game we had been playing. She went about her work in her normal way.

“What is it that she sings?” Joan had seated herself on the bed beside me, so I did not have to speak very loud.

“Do you want me to find out?”

Before I could reply to the contrary, Joan had pushed herself away from the bed and was stalking the servant on cat’s feet, an ear turned in an obvious manner toward the woman.

I stopped my breath, hoping the servant would make no sudden movement, but she did not. Joan dogged her until she left.

“And?”

She shook her head. “Mutter, mutter, mutter, WHITE. Mutter, mutter, mutter, GRAY. Mutter, mutter, mutter, TIGHT. Mutter, mutter, mutter, DECAY . . .”

For some reason the recitation made me shudder. But then Joan drew up her skirts and began to dance a jig. “And a hey nonny, nonny.”

“That was not part of it!”

She dropped her hold on her skirts and came back to sit beside me.

“Maybe it was and maybe it weren’t. But you will never know!” She took my foot back into her lap. “Did they laugh at you today?”

“Nay.”

“See then?”

“Neither did they talk to me, any of them.”

“They are afraid of you.”

I scoffed. “Aye, beast that I am.”

“They are.”

“Afraid of what?”

“They are like all those fishwives in King’s Lynn that mock the fairest maids, afraid that they will never regain what it is they once had.”

“I only wish I could stop going.”

Joan stopped rubbing my foot. “Never say that!”

“Why not? ’Tis true.”

“When you stop going, the earl will have no use for you.”

She was right. She was always right. “Is there no way I could have what I want and do what he wants?”

Joan raised her eyes to mine. “There is one. You could have his babe.”

His babe. That would require the sharing of a bed. But after our wedding and my introduction to the Queen, the earl had never touched me again. I cannot say that I much minded. “I could. But it requires two for such . . . things.”

“Why should he take you into his bed if you claw and spit at him every time he comes near?”

“If I do, ’tis only because he claws and spits at me.”

“Sheathe your claws.”

“If I sheathe them,” I protested, “then I go about unarmed.”

“If you do not, then he . . . simply . . . goes about.”

It was the first time I had considered such a thought. I had worked so hard at protecting myself from him. Might I only have succeeded in driving him into the arms of another? If he were steadfastly ignoring me, then on whom was he bestowing his attentions? I knew him to return home quite late. “Joan, is he . . . has he been . . . ?”

“I do not know. But why should he not?”

I could not let myself think too long on what he might have been doing with his time and attentions. But I could start to consider the cost of reversing my own course.

I
must
reverse my course.

My father had populated the countryside of Norfolk with his bastards. The one thing I hoped from my marriage was that my own husband would not do the same.

9

T
he celebration of Her Majesty’s Accession Day, the day she had ascended to her throne, arrived. I attended the tilts at he the palace and watched as the earl took his place among the other nobles. Some of them had their lady’s glove fixed to their helmet or their sleeve, but the earl had asked for nothing from me. And had he asked for something, I confess I do not know what I would have given him.

What kind of man was he that he could ignore his own wife? That he was more solicitous of his servants’ interests, of Joan’s even, than my own? I could not call him unkind, just as I could not call him unhandsome. His dark curls were pleasing. And his beard was quite precisely trimmed. His mustaches were long enough to make themselves known, but not so grown as to be overlarge. In short, he looked the perfect courtier. In fact, he courted all but one.

All but me.

And I could not understand why.

Not that I wanted to
be
courted.