Green Darkness (24 page)

“See you not,” he cried, “that I shall be as fine a jouster as my Father’s grace? When I’ve reached his size, there’ll not be a knight in the kingdom can best me!”

“True, sire—in troth, you are near so already,” the company shouted. And, indeed, that day they all believed it. The King’s lassitude and pettishness had vanished. Nobody thought of doctors, nobody remembered, nor wished to, the intrusion last night of a grave Italian physician reportedly sent by John Cheke.

At Cowdray the sun shone all that July day. The young people romped decorously, they shot at the butts, they played a game of hoodman’s blind through the gardens and the maze, almost as far as the close walks. Edward insisted upon being “it” for a time, and happened to catch Magdalen Dacre, which caused much merriment in which the King joined, crying that he had snared a lioness and feared she would devour him. There were those who missed dancing and gay music, but even the older folk who remembered King Harry’s bacchanalian revels admitted the charm of youthful simplicity and forgot their care in watching the young King Sir Anthony and the other secret Catholics ceased for that day to worry about their futures or the sinister Duke and his policies. Even Geraldine and her brother, the jaunty Gerald, laid aside their plottings, as Geraldine applied her entire energies to the further enslavement of Lord Clinton. She succeeded so well that the shrewd Baron forgot his caution and seizing Geraldine behind a rose trellis embraced her passionately while murmuring endearments.

Geraldine’s inward triumph was masked by pretty confusion and sufficient coyness in exhibiting, and then withholding, her charms so that Clinton was inflamed with a lust he had not felt in years, and finally proposed marriage. He even agreed that they should at once ask the King’s blessing on their betrothal.

This they did during dinner, when the King was not yet surfeited, and was munching the last morsel of a Southdown baby lamb chop.

Clinton suddenly appeared at his side, holding Geraldine’s hand.

“Your royal grace . . .” said Clinton, lisping a little for lack of teeth, and looking as sheepish as a stout middle-aged courtier could. “We crave Your Majesty’s approval.”

Edward stared at his Lord High Admiral, at the prominent eyes, the network of purple veins above his cheek beard, and was amused by the incongruous lisp and diffident air. “What is it, my lord?”

“The Lady Elizabeth Browne and I wish to wed, sire, and soon.”

Geraldine curtsied and managed to blush a little beneath her artful face paint. “It is true love, your grace,” she murmured sweetly, then remembering the King’s deafness, repeated, louder, “
True love,
” and simpered.

Edward knew nothing of true love in that sense, though he understood affection. He did know the importance of proper marriage amongst his nobility, and quickly considered this one. It seemed an unequal match. The dowager Browne had no assets that he knew of, and she seemed to him of very ripe age—and was Irish to boot. A Fitzgerald. Still, there was the trickle of royal blood, and Clinton was rich enough and important enough to ignore other drawbacks. And surely the
Duke
approved of Clinton. Edward wished the Duke were here to advise, then suddenly decided that was silly. He was nearly grown, he need not everlastingly rely on protectors and regents, while underneath ran uneasy realization that he was afraid of the Duke.

“You have our royal consent,” said Edward grandly. “You are old enough, my lady, to dispose of your own hand.”

Geraldine winced and cried, “My brother Gerald, he is head of my family, and is in complete accord.”

She looked around for Gerald, but he had unfortunately sneaked off from the banquet to indulge his passion for dicing with a couple of equerries.

Anthony Browne came to her rescue. “In the absence of Fitzgerald, your royal grace, I take leave to sanction the remarriage of my father’s widow.” He bowed to the King, and clapped Clinton on the back. “Ring?” he hissed, adding to himself—give the woman a ring, you old cock. You’ve been through this business twice before and you act like a moonstruck yokel dithering before an outraged father.

Lord Clinton hastily drew a gold and ruby signet ring from his thumb and put it on Geraldine’s outstretched finger. The betrothal was accomplished.

Celia watched the pantomime at the High Table from the other end of the Hall. She could hear nothing at that distance, and the resplendent figures bowing and curtsying meant nothing to her. Since her morning escape into the garden she had continued to feel as unreal as the carved wooden buck heads which looked down on them all, eleven pair of sightless eyes, eternally remote from the glitter and the noise.

Leonard Dacre had found means to sit next to her, though her position, inexorably fixed by the steward, was “below the salt.” Neither Ursula’s commands nor entreaties could improve Celia’s seating. No wench from the tavern, be she twenty times niece to a negligible knight’s widow, had a right to gentry status. The girl was extremely lucky to be seated at all, even on a lowly bench. That she owed this honor to Sir Anthony’s casual direction yesterday only the steward knew, and he was far too busy to speculate about it.

Nor did Celia, she listened absently to Leonard’s crude love-making, as he hunched his lanky body over her, and put his raw-boned freckled face close to hers.

She ate the collops and mince pies. She drank the ale served at the lowest table, she listened to a spate of North Country wooing, most of which she did not understand, until the young man, increasingly fired by both her beauty and her indifference, cried, “By Christ’s blood, lass—will ye no
look
at me? Am I so ill-favored?”

Then she turned her golden head in its demure heart-shaped cap, and gave him a small puzzled smile. “I’m bemused,” she said apologetically.

The smile further undid him. Its charm, its dimple, its mysterious unawareness. He had wenched since he was thirteen. He had never had a rebuff, not
he,
a Dacre of Gilsland. Dacres took women, high or low, when and if they wanted them. He and Tom kept tallies, they notched a certain oak beam over the cellar door at Naworth Castle. Since their full manhood, Tom had suffered the slight handicap of marriage. The Neville wife was jealous, and her family powerful. To counterbalance, as Tom affectionately pointed out, Leonard had the twisted shoulder—the uglier face. But Leonard had found these no detriment. He knew his real prowess, and there was many a lass along the banks of the Irthing, and even as far afield as Newcastle and Carlisle, who received a few groats every New Year’s Day for the rearing of his bastards.

“Hark ye, lass—” he shouted, as Celia balanced a chunk of mince pie on her knife and ate it vaguely. “Where do ye lodge? Is’t wi’ yonder stravaged lady, your aunt I believe”—he pointed up the table to Ursula who was watching them with wary approval. “Or at the tavern where they tell me ye’re often serving wench?” Leonard, too, had been making inquiries.

“At times the one, at times the other,” answered Celia, mopping her trencher with a piece of bread.

“By the Virgin, will ye play cat and mouse wi’ a
Dacre!
” Leonard cried.

“You must not swear by
Her,
” Celia said catching her breath. “’Tis dangerous. Very dangerous.”

“How’s that?” Leonard cried, his hand clutching at his dirk.

Celia shook her head. “Tis dangerous for
all,
but in especial for . . .” She sighed, and to Leonard’s astonishment her wide sea-green eyes began to shimmer with tears.

“Ye love a lad who is in danger?” he asked sharply. Intuitions were foreign to him. This one was the measure of the emotion the strange, unapproachable lass aroused.

“It is so,” said Celia, bowing her head.

Jealousy was now added to Leonard’s ardor. It released the natural instinct to lay hands on a desired possession. He grabbed Celia by the neck, upturned her face and bit her lips while he forced his hand into her bodice. Her response was instant. She clouted his ear with a resounding slap.

The pages and equerries nearest them burst into guffaws. Amorous scuffles were common enough, but the piquancy of this one was enhanced by knowledge that the great redheaded lout had no business sitting with them, anyway. However, uncouth and ill-dressed, he
was
a noble.

Leonard darted a furious glance at the laughers, and stalked up the Hall where he squeezed himself in next to Magdalen. He did not look at Celia as he pushed past her, his emotions shuttled between resentful respect for her and heightened desire. Such complexity was baffling, and he received his sister’s spirited teasing in sulky silence.

Sir Anthony, whose eyes were hawk keen, saw and interpreted the bit of by-play, even while he parried a sudden spate of embarrassing questions from the King. Had Sir Anthony had to deal with much furtive papistry on his estates? Or, were the tenants of Cowdray, Easebourne, Midhurst, Battle and the rest properly convinced of the diabolical errors in the old religion?

“Oh, entirely so, your grace,” said Anthony quietly, and on guard. But the King’s eyes were truly guileless, he had obviously forgotten Anthony’s own imprisonment for hearing Mass last year, as he had forgotten much which happened before his illness.

“What is your opinion, Sir Anthony, of our new royal chaplain, the Scottish John Knox?” asked Edward with genuine interest. “He marvelously expounds the true doctrines of Calvin, does he not? Have you studied Master Knox’s tract on the abomination of the Mass, and kindred idolatries?”

“Not yet, your grace, I shall procure a tract at once.”

“Although at times,” Edward continued reflectively, “I find Master Knox a trifle unyielding, he and the Archbishop often do not agree on points in my beloved new Prayer Book. I dislike their squabbles.”

Anthony suppressed a smile. He was touched by the boy’s evident pride in the new version of the Church of England Prayer Book and delighted to hear that Knox, the fanatical archenemy of Catholicism, was subjected to any check, even from one as wishy-washy and opportunistic as Archbishop Cranmer seemed to be.

“The Duke will soon join me on the Progress,” Edward went on chatting, half to himself and half to so pleasantly receptive a listener. “At Salisbury, I believe . . .”

Deo Gratias:
Anthony thought, and would it were
further
from here.

“Your royal grace had a letter from the Duke last night?” he inquired.

“Aye, he draws me a plan of the new fortifications at Berwick. Most subtly wrought, and will insure peace on the borders. All my lord Duke’s ideas are of surpassing cleverness . . . He hath even suggested a new devise for the succession, which I will profoundly consider.”

Anthony was so startled that first he could not believe his ears, then was betrayed into a thoroughly impolite “
What?
”

Edward stiffened, he raised his chin in a gesture like his father’s.

“My allusion was indiscreet, Sir Anthony, and you will at once forget it. There is nothing settled.”

Anthony instantly recovered, he bowed and smiled gravely. “I shall not refer to the new fort at Berwick, sire, though mention of it seems
not
indiscreet to me. Nevertheless, I quite understand that the Scots being ever slippery, and the Border so ticklish, it is best to . . .” He babbled on until Edward was entirely reassured, and doubted he had spoken of the succession at all.

But on Anthony a sinister light had burst. He could guess at no details, but he guessed at least the gist of Northumberland’s plot. Somehow, the sequence of the succession—the Princess Mary, to be followed by the Princess Elizabeth—was to be altered, though it had been decreed by King Henry himself. Somehow, those Dudleys were going to seize the throne.
De jure
—Northumberland already had de facto regal powers.

And a member of his own household, that precious Geraldine with her newly affianced Clinton, were in the plot, one which Anthony had thought of no more consequence than a widow’s personal anglings to catch a good marriage and restore her brother to his earldom.

Perfidy! Anthony thought, disgusted, and fearful, too.

He had always felt great pity for the unfortunate Princess Mary whose religion was his own; he had less sympathy for the fiery-tressed Lady Elizabeth who was currently living like a nun in sobriety and neglect at Hatfield and who, though a professed Protestant and once Edward’s dear playmate, was now known to be in his bad graces. Northumberland’s doing—of course.

Though the Princesses had been declared in and out of bastardy, according to the old King’s whims, yet never had he denied that he
was
their father. They were as royal as Edward—Mary, indeed, was more so, since her unhappy mother, Catherine of Aragon, had also been royal.

His speculations and forebodings were perforce checked by a restless movement from the King, and the need to provide the next acceptable entertainment.

Anthony had by now gauged his guest’s tastes. He had, this very morning, instructed his steward to send for a troupe of mountebanks who were temporarily living in tents on the Petworth Highway. The mountebanks were unmistakably English (no more errors like that), they tumbled, and they juggled, they also had a dancing bear and a clever little mongrel which they dressed in a black monk’s habit. Its trick was to strut around on its hind legs, clasp its forepaws together on command, then collapse at intervals in front of a little wooden altar complete with crucifix, which its master placed before it.

When he viewed this trick the King shrieked with laughter. So did all the company who crowded around in the courtyard. Anthony felt no more compunction for the travesty than he would have at watching the reenactment of Greek temple rites or Babylonian dances. The dog’s antics bore no relation to his true religion. Lady Jane felt otherwise. She made a stifled excuse and escaped to the bedchamber, where she knelt sobbing by the unburied corpse of her baby.

Celia—she was jammed into the outer passage by the butteries—also felt otherwise, when by craning and peeping over shoulders she saw the little dog in the monk’s habit. She had begun by laughing too; the dog was comical. Then the trailing black robes, the sham tonsure—a wig plastered on the dog’s head—its shrill yelps when the altar appeared, all suddenly appalled her. She looked sideways to the left, where the south wall stood. Somewhere under that must be Stephen. He could perhaps hear the raucous merriment.