Cicely's Lord Lincoln

by Sandra Heath Wilson

  Barely fifteen minutes later, as the afternoon light faded, Cicely left Pasmer’s Place escorted by a small party of Jon’s men to see her to the palace in safety. She made no attempt to see Jon before she left, nor did he attempt to see her. The escort had waited for her in the courtyard and there was nothing she could do to prevent them from accompanying her down towards the river. Mary came too, carrying a large leather satchel that contained what would be needed overnight. Everything else would be sent to Greenwich the following day.

  The sky was dark grey now, and rain scattered through the streets that descended to the wharf, where the wooden cranes were busy unloading wine. She had no intention of permitting her husband’s escort to remain with her all the way to Greenwich, because she wanted nothing more from Sir Jon Welles, only what was hers by right. She had removed her wedding ring and left it on the small table in the bedchamber. If he did not regard her as his wife, she would not regard him as her husband. She was Lady Cicely Plantagenet again, and proud to bear the name.

  But as she and Mary threaded through the busy wharf to the stairs, she saw a familiar figure waiting. Jack. She ran to him and he caught her close as she burst into tears. He held her tightly, stroking her cheek. It was so caring, and told so much about him. He was a rock amid shifting sands, and Cicely did not know what she would do without him.

  ‘He says we were never married,’ she sobbed, hiding her face against him, unable to retain the control she so desperately wanted.

  Jon’s men still hovered close by, and Jack waved them away, but they hesitated, incurring his wrath. ‘Be gone, damn you! My lady wishes nothing more from your master!’

  They backed away, glancing at each other. They knew who Jack was, and decided he had to be obeyed before Sir Jon Welles. As they hastened away to tell Jon what had happened, Jack returned his attention to Cicely. ‘What exactly happened?’

  She told him, and he was startled. ‘You caused his mistress to fall down the stairs? That must have been worth seeing.’

  ‘Do not make fun of it, Jack. It was horrible. Jon and I said such cruel things.’ She pulled away to take the kerchief he offered.

  ‘A raw moment, sweetheart. He will regret it.’

  ‘No, Jack, nor do I think I care. I did not believe he could be like this. We meant so much to each other, but now it is as if I imagined everything.’

  ‘Godforsaken numbskull,’ Jack breathed. ‘Cicely, I wanted to tell him why you have been going to Henry.’

  ‘I am relieved you did not. After what he said to me today, let him think what he wishes.’ Somehow she managed to say it firmly, as if Jon’s trespass was simply too great, but she wept inside. She was able to make herself meet Jack’s eyes. ‘Why are you still here?’

  ‘I knew by his attitude that you would not stay. It did not seem wise to wait within view of Pasmer’s Place, and so I came here, which was the way I knew you would use. You go to Greenwich?’

  ‘Where else? I have nowhere, Jack.’

  ‘Do I take you to Bess?’

  She hesitated. ‘No, I cannot face her now, not when I tried so hard to persuade her to turn to Henry. He behaved badly, and now he wants me to return to him.’

  ‘Then where? I would offer you the use of my rooms at the palace, but I do not think Henry would appreciate such thoughtfulness.’

  ‘I would not accept anyway, Jack.’ She gazed at his lips, wanting to kiss them. Here, in the middle of the crowded Three Cranes wharf.

  ‘Then will you go to Henry himself?’

  ‘No! It has to be more discreet than simply going to him, before my chambers are ready. Or he is prepared.’

  ‘He will always be prepared for you.’

  ‘That is as maybe. No, take me to his mother.’

  Jack’s lips parted. ‘Margaret?’

  ‘She knows about Henry and me, and will help. If she does not, I will threaten to go openly to him and permit him to set me up as his mistress. That will move her! It will only be for a day or so anyway, but I must have somewhere.’

  Jack kissed her on the forehead, just a tender little gesture, warm and reassuring, nothing that could be misunderstood by any watcher. Then he hailed a skiff, before adding, ‘Sweetheart, I will take you to Margaret, but then I will have to tell Henry. He charged me with escorting you, and so I have no choice. You may yet find yourself in his bed tonight.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Henry’s icy mother faced Cicely. They were in Margaret’s rooms at Greenwich. It was now dark, and candles had been lit. The windows were boarded against the night outside, and there was a smell of spices from an open bowl in the hearth, among them cinnamon, which brought Taleisin ap Gruffydd to mind.

  ‘You seek my protection, Lady Welles?’

  ‘I believe you will find I am Lady Cicely Plantagenet again, my lady, or perhaps even Dame Scrope, which is what Sir Jon Welles now chooses to believe. Yes, I seek your aid for a day or so, until my rooms are prepared.’

  ‘Are you not to be in the queen’s household? Why do you not go to her?’

  ‘It is better I do not.’

  Margaret did not notice the significance of the answer. ‘You leave my half-brother and then come to me? If there is a side to be taken in this, I take his.’

  ‘Your half-brother has installed his common mistress at Pasmer’s Place and would have permitted her to wear my clothes and jewellery had I not returned and discovered it. That may be acceptable behaviour to you, but it is not to me. He can have his witch-hag if he wishes, but not if by doing so he gravely insults the queen’s sister. I am prepared to go to the king about this, to accept his offer.’

  ‘Offer?’

  ‘He wishes to make me his mistress, and not secretly. He it is who is issuing instructions concerning my accommodation here.’

  Margaret was dismayed. Set a king’s daughter, Henry’s own sister-in-law, up as his paramour? Yorkist opinion would be up in arms. Was he mad too? She paced up and down, her funereal robes making the candles flutter and smoke, but then she halted. ‘Very well, Lady Cicely, I will protect you until such time as your accommodation here is ready. But on one condition.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘That you do not become my son’s mistress. I will not allow you to be the cause of rebellion.’

  ‘I fear I cannot meet your condition, my lady. I have no desire to be anyone’s mistress, Lady Margaret, but if I am dealt insults and punishment of any kind, I will go to the king in whatever capacity he chooses to take me. And I will be all to him that he could possibly want. Believe me, I can secure his love forever if I choose.’

  Margaret looked away and fell silent.

  Cicely curtseyed politely, and withdrew.

  While seated at Margaret’s crowded board that evening, apart from being subject to constant glances and whispers, Cicely had a very sharp and disagreeable reminder of unpleasant events in the past. She was seated close to Margaret, as was bound to be, given her high rank, when a manservant poured her some wine. She would have drunk it had not something—she knew not what—made her sniff the cup. Spearmint!

  In a trice she was back at Wyberton, the new Lady Welles, heavy with child and beset by the witchcraft of Judith Talby’s elder sister, Lucy. Mary discovered spearmint in her wine, and knew it to actually be pennyroyal, a very poisonous and dangerous herb intended on that occasion to induce miscarriage. Tonight the smell was far stronger. What else could pennyroyal achieve? Grave illness? Death?

  Suddenly fearful, she put the cup down audibly, and several people looked towards her. She tried not to show anything, but her mind was racing. It could not have anything to do with Margaret, who would be as shocked as she was. No, Cicely had a good notion with whom the blame lay. She turned to the manservant. The ewer he carried was small, and clearly intended only for her. ‘Who gave you this wine?’ she asked.

  He was startled. ‘Why, a woman newly employed, my lady. I do not know her name. She said she had been told this was your preferred wine and to giv
e it only to you.’

  ‘Was she tall, with flaxen hair?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘The wine is spoiled. Have it poured away. Do not drink it yourself, or permit anyone else to drink it, because I fear it will make you ill.’

  ‘My lady?’

  ‘Do as I say. And be sure to do it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’ He took the cup and the ewer away.

  After that, Cicely was careful to drink only what others were drinking.

  Later she told Mary what had happened, and they resolved to be especially careful from now on, because Judith Talby was clearly intent upon revenge—or maybe even ridding herself of her protector’s inconvenient wife—and was enterprising enough to get herself employed at Greenwich Palace.

  That night, when Cicely was trying to sleep in the small but comfortable chamber that had been found for her in Margaret’s apartments, Judith Talby had the temerity to actually enter the chamber and come to the bedside stealthily, a mere shadow against the glow of firelight. Cicely pretended to be asleep, but watched from half-closed lids. How the woman had found her way in was a mystery, for the door was bolted. Or so Cicely believed.

  Judith did not touch her. Instead, she stretched up to tie something beneath the bed’s grey damask tester, in a corner where the curtain gathers were most generous. Then she stepped back from the bed and whispered something—a chant—several times, before moving towards the door to leave as silently and ultimately invisibly as she had come.

  Skin crawling, Cicely slipped from the bed, lit a candle at the small fire, and then went to look at what had been tied to the tester. It was a charm of ill intent, consisting of a dried frog, dried monkshood, other unidentifiable items of disgusting appearance, and finally two small, neat locks of hair, both dark chestnut colour. One had been cut from the head of whosever hair it was, the other had clearly gathered from a hairbrush. The whole was tied with thin black ribbon, and cast a monstrous shadow in the swaying candlelight.

  Cicely’s pulse raced as she removed the repellent thing, but then, about to hurl it on the fire, she looked again at the two lots of hair. That from a hairbrush was her own, she was sure, while the other . . . She hurried to her purse for the little bag containing Leo’s hair, and examined both locks by candlelight. They were the same: colour, length, texture, everything! Jon’s witch of a mistress had been able to take a lock of Leo’s hair! But how did the creature even know that Leo Kymbe was connected to Lady Welles?

  Shaking, she replaced Leo’s original lock of hair safely back in her purse, and then hurled the offensive charm on to the fire, using a poker to be sure it burned completely. What should she do? She could not let this happen without doing anything at all! She had to speak to Jon. The last thing she wished to do was contact him, but she could see no alternative. The bitch was his whore; he had to deal with her!

  Still trembling, she placed the candle on the small table, where there was paper, quill, ink and sealing wax. The note, to be sent to Pasmer’s Place at first light, was brief, simply requesting him to meet her at the palace steps at noon. There was no need to say anything else, because she knew he would respond. No matter how rancorously they had parted, he would know she had very good reason to make such an urgent and direct request.

  It was windy and raining heavily the next day as she waited at the steps, wrapped in a cloak, her hood raised. The river was choppy, the air icily cold, and everything was bleak and cheerless. She did not know if Henry’s spies were watching, nor did she really care. Lady Welles would merely be speaking with her husband, for which surely not even Henry could find fault. If he did, she intended to say it concerned a missing jewel that she suspected Jon’s mistress of taking. She would tell Jon to say the same. Blackening Judith Talby’s name was immaterial.

  Another skiff approached, and she recognized Jon’s huddled figure. He was hooded and cloaked, but she knew it was him. The boatman manoeuvred the skiff through the throng of vessels at the congested steps, and Jon alighted. She saw him instruct the boatman to wait, before he came up the steps to her.

  ‘My lady?’ He inclined his head.

  ‘My lord.’

  ‘I trust your clothes and other belongings have been safely delivered? Yes, I see by the hem of your gown that they have. Can we at least converse out of the rain? Or is the harangue to be fairly brief?’

  ‘Harangue? I merely wish to tell you something important. Well, important to me. I cannot speak for you.’

  He took her elbow before she could protest, and ushered her just inside the palace entrance, where they were clearly visible to the stream of people passing to and fro. Not that anyone gave them a second glance. There was such a concourse at the entrance, and the weather caused such inconvenience, that paying attention to two particular cloaked figures was not of prime importance.

  Jon placed his gauntlets on a window shelf and threw his hood back, so that the turquoise on his finger caught the pale light momentarily. ‘Well? Did you spend last night with my concupiscent nephew?’

  ‘No, but I did spend part of the night with your evil hag.’

  ‘Judith was with me.’

  ‘Not all the time. I imagine you slept inordinately well, helped by some draught or other she prepared for you. Please hear what I have to say before you dismiss it out of hand.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  First she reminded him of everything that had happened at Wyberton with Lucy Talby, and then said what was happening now, with the poisoned wine and the charm. ‘It was Leo’s hair, Jon,’ she finished, abandoning the formality that really had no place between them. ‘Mary Kymbe knows of these things, because of her aunt, Mistress Kymbe, of whose knowledge and experience you are well aware. Mary assures me that this charm has now been thoroughly destroyed by fire, and that I am safe from her because I destroyed my own hair, but that does not mean Leo is as well. He would have to burn his own hair, you see. Your hag can still try to hurt him again, and again. And when I look at you, and see how unwell you are, I cannot help but think that somewhere she has put a charm directed upon you.’

  ‘That is nonsense.’

  ‘Is it? Have you refused her something she really wants? Does she wish to be Lady Welles? She certainly wishes to be rid of the present holder of the title. You should really look in a mirror long and hard. You are her victim, Jon.’

  He ignored her. ‘You are sure it was Leo’s hair?’

  ‘There is no doubt. You think I would not recognize it after you gave me another lock? This second lock is exactly the same in every way, even to the length and the manner of being cut. It was purloined when you took your evil hag to Friskney. You swore to me that she had not been near Leo.’

  ‘I am aware of what I said, and believed what I said. But she did not know he is your son. How could she? Tom Kymbe certainly did not tell her, and no one else knows, except Mistress Kymbe.’

  ‘Nevertheless, she knows. I thought, perhaps . . .’

  ‘Jesu, Cicely, I may fuck her but I do not confide in her, least of all such a dangerous secret!’ He was irritated. ‘If she has learned that Leo is your child, I do not know how.’

  ‘She has to know. Why else would his hair be with mine in the charm?’

  ‘What do you wish me to do, Cicely?’

  ‘You need to ask? Get rid of her. For your own sake as well as Leo’s. I would have her dead, but no doubt you will balk at that. Keep her away from Friskney, instruct Tom Kymbe not to let her on his land, and tell Mistress Kymbe to protect Leo with every charm and incantation she knows. And to protect you. Get rid of the creature for your own sake, Jon. Fucking her will be dangerous to you until you cast me aside for her, do you not see it?’

  ‘I am merely taking longer than expected to recover from an ailment.’ Had he said it was the shock of what had happened at Winchester, he could not have been clearer.

  She took in the greyness of his complexion, his loss of weight, and the overall change in him. ‘This has
nothing to do with my failings, Jon. For pity’s sake, take care. Do not eat or drink anything she has prepared for you. Please, Jon, for we may be apart at the moment, but I have no wish at all to be your widow.’

  ‘What a cheering thought.’

  ‘Widowhood will not suit me.’ She tried to smile. ‘You know I am right about her, Jon. Yes, of course you do, for why else do you suddenly wear woodruff? Protection? Mary says it is. Why are you still keeping the hag so close?’

  ‘Because I cannot be rid of her,’ he answered.

  ‘Cannot?’

  He met her eyes. ‘That is what I said, and it is what I mean. But I will remove her from Pasmer’s Place.’ He glanced towards the river. ‘And I will see that Tom Kymbe takes every precaution possible with Leo.’

  She was confounded. What else could she say to him? ‘Jon, you rescued me at Sheriff Hutton, and I have always appreciated and loved you for it. Now, please, let me rescue you.’

  He smiled, straightened from the wall, and then took her wedding ring from his purse to push it back on her finger. ‘There, that is more proper, I think. For now, however, I must return to the city. Henry has found a long list of duties for me to attend to. Anything to prevent the possibility of me having you back in my bed. In the meantime, you have my word that I will do all I can to protect Leo.’ He bowed over her hand, his lips not touching, and then went out into the winter cold.

  She gazed after him, and closed her fingers to keep the ring tight.

  It was noon a few days before Christmas when Cicely was commanded to go to the king. She had spent a number of nights with him, but this was a daytime command, and not to his bedchamber, but to the official audience chamber.

  Greenwich Palace was crowded, and the command was formal. She wore a leaf-green velvet gown, and her hair was hidden beneath a delicate butterfly headdress from behind which floated a fragile gauze veil. There were pearls at her throat and looped down over her bodice.

  The announcement of her name was a matter of surreptitious but definite interest. What was this about? The great chamber was thronged with courtiers, even though Henry had dismissed much of the court again for Christmas, as he had at Hallowtide. He was in an inner chamber, and as she sank to her knees she understood the interest in her arrival, for Jon was there too. The three of them were alone.