by Anne Carsley
Charles was gone when Julian awoke in the high heat of the summer morning to find the thin gown spread over her, a heady bouquet of field roses in pink and white placed at her head, and near them a horn cup filled with ale along with a joint of the rabbit from the night before. She smiled at the love offerings, remembering the glory of the night just past. Then she drew one of the headiest of the roses to her as she breathed in the sweetness of it. Love’s own flower, said the romances. The sun caressed her smooth limbs and turned her skin to milky glory where the berry stain did not reach. Suddenly, passionately, Julian was voicing the prayer to whatever gods might be listening.
“Let me bear his child. Give me that to take into the Welsh lands!”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“She walks this way nearly ever day when the weather is fine. Her attendants often are bidden to remain well behind her. We have only to watch and wait without presenting ourselves as out of the ordinary.” Charles paced up and down the little trail, then pulled aside a leafy branch to reveal a wide meadow which gave onto an oak forest. He waved a hand. “Beyond is the palace of Hatfield.”
Even in conversation among themselves they had come to refer to the Princess Elizabeth as “the lady.” Prying ears were everywhere and matters continued to grow worse with burnings, disease, and talk of rebellion. In the month and more since their decision was taken, the party had crossed a once populous and fertile section of the kingdom to come to this retreat some few miles from London and wherever they went men prayed for the coming of the new regime.
“Tomorrow will be the first day. Let us hope that we are soon successful.” Sedril spoke the words almost hesitantly. “I sense a great unhealth abroad in this land and yearn for the mountains.”
Julian and Armita exchanged glances over Tasa’s small head. The child was their focal point and must not be excited. Armita said now, “We must go and practice our game, sweeting. Are you ready?”
They had taken shelter in an abandoned hunting lodge which was probably part of the grounds of the old palace but never used, possibly since the early days of Great Harry himself. There were winding passages and odd corners aplenty, but mostly they kept close together in the several rooms that at one time had been the servants’ quarters. Charles and Yarno spied the land out well before sanctioning the move, and now they seldom left if except : a verify that all practices of the lady remained the same.
Under the urgency to implement the plan, Charles and Julian no longer made love with the passionate urgency they once had taken. Now they came together in hunger and slept wound in each other’s arms, but often one or the other would rise to walk out under the trees in the summer fragrance and return unable to sleep. It seemed to Julian that she loved Charles more each day and that each minute took him farther away from her. If the rebellion did come, he would be in the forefront of it and would probably be killed, such would be the revenge of the jealous gods.
One day it rained. Another day the entourage of the princess was surrounded by the black figures of priests. Still another she walked with a tall soldier and one serving maid. Then it rained again. Julian was never close enough to see more than a tall, thin, straight figure with flying red hair that was sometimes severely confined, but it seemed strange to think that on such fragility depended the hopes of England and, more important to Julian, those of Charles. The rain continued.
Their nerves grew taut and they slept less. The lines in Charles’s face grew deeper, and Julian found herself wanting to scream at some of the antics of Tasa. Even the phlegmatic Sedril muttered Romany curses under his breath and spat out the never ending stew they dared cook only in deepest night for fear of the smoke being seen.
Then on a morning when the air was scented with the smell of flowers and the sky was new washed, birds darting high in an ecstasy of movement and breezes shaking droplets from the leaves, they saw the girl running across the meadow and heard her high spiraling laughter as she waved several well-cloaked people back. “It is now.” Charles whispered the words to Julian, and she returned the pressure of his hand. Armita kissed Tasa and urged her forward a little. Sedril and Yarno sank down more deeply in the bushes.
Tasa ran out into the flower-starred meadow, her slim fingers grasping after an errant butterfly and pausing to touch a late rose vine that trailed along the ground. Armita stayed watchfully in the shadow of a small oak while Julian went forward as if intent on capturing the child before she went too far. Obedient to her instructions, Tasa pulled off one of the hedge roses and headed straight for the girl, who was very close now.
The piping child’s voice lifted on the warm air. “I have a flower just picked for you. Will you take it?”
The red-haired young woman wore a simple brown gown, and her head was bare. Julian saw that her skin was milk-white, almost translucent, her nose high-bridged, the chin pointed and cleanly cut. She had the same light brows of her sister, Mary, and her eyes were a curious mixture of blue and black that seemed to bore through Julian as she approached.
“Tasa, Tasa, come here, What will the lady think?” Julian was surprised that her voice did not shake and was thankful that the child learned quickly.
“Take my rose, pretty lady.” Tasa extended the flower again, and Elizabeth took it. Julian saw that her hands were truly beautiful, long-fingered and brilliantly white, bare of rings. She held the flower so that it showed to best advantage on them, then lifted those strange eyes and looked at them both.
Her voice was curiously deep for so slight a girl, and it woke strange memories in Julian. Just so had Mary Tudor sounded when she was kind.
“I like your symbolism and your compliment, my little one. Do you and your fair mother like this lovely day? I suppose you have been mewed up by the rain?”
“Where are you, Alison? Come here, you know that the park is not for the likes of us!” Charles, hat pulled low, shoulders slumped, and wearing his peasant garb of gray cloth, approached them, the very picture of a common man looking for his wife and child.
Julian and Tasa, in order to catch and hold the eyes of the princess, wore identical gowns of wild rose color with matching bodices. Julian’s hair flamed over her shoulders and there was a white ribbon in it. Tasa’s curls shone brilliantly black and her small curved lips were triumphant at the important part she had had to play.
They heard a call from several people advancing to attend the princess, and she lifted a hand to wave at them. The moment was upon them. Julian said, “Madam the Princess, we are harmless folk who would beg you to listen to us for the space of a very few minutes. Grant us that, I pray!”
Elizabeth looked at the girl and her lisp twisted downward. “I have no power. That is in London.”
“Only listen. We mean you no harm.”
Henry VIII’s daughter laughed at that, and her arm went backward to halt the approach of her servants. “Hold, good people, I will chat with these country folk for a moment.” She was instantly obeyed. Then she turned back to Julian. “What is it that you think I can remedy?” There was a magnetism about her that reached out and lured. Julian felt as if the sun were already blazing down on them.
Charles was at them now, kneeling in the correct court fashion, hat in his hand. Horrified, Julian remembered that she had forgotten the curtsy that was required before royalty, she a lady-in-waiting to the queen! She sank down in her turn and heard Charles begin.
“Forgive us. Lady Princess, it was the only way to approach you.” His low impassioned words began, and none could have doubted him true servant of the realm. Only Charles Varland could have crowded so much into the few sentences he accomplished before Tasa started running toward the end of the meadow where the servants stood. Her discipline had been forgotten in the excitement of the moment. Julian dashed after her, caught up the wriggling little body, and made her way back to the princess and Charles.
He was saying, “But if you would let me explain further! The time is so very right. . . .”
“I will never
condone treason or rebellion against the lawful ruler! What should I expect in my own time if that ever comes? I am not even considered heir to the throne, and my sister may yet bear her own. Get you from me!” The low, slicing tone did not alter the casual stance of the princess.
Julian had never seen Charles lose the icy authority that was an integral part of his bearing though at times it was eclipsed by a warm humanity or tenderness. Now he slumped as if wounded, and his face was white under the covering stains. She could not bear it. Words rushed up. “English people die daily, madam, in persecution and for chance words. The queen is known to be ill, and many fear for her reason. We speak truly to you. Hesitate and the country may be lost.”
Elizabeth gave a high, quick laugh which Julian recognized to have tones of hysteria. “You speak so for love of your man. It is treason.”
“It is not treason to wish to live and be happy. What kind of lives do any of us have while the flames consume all who go against the ways of your sister and her husband? You are the only one to help.” Charles seemed to wring the words from his heart.
The strange eyes that could be so like Mary Tudor’s blazed on them both. “I saw only peasants this day. Obey Mary the Queen as you are bound to do. You may report that I so spoke, that I have no disloyalty toward my rulers. This is not the first attempt; it will not be the last. But then you know all that. Go.”
Charles seemed not to hear her. “Come, Alison, our time is wasted. She will dare nothing.” He did not trouble to bend the knee but turned and walked away, his back very straight
Horrified, Julian looked again at the princess and saw that she was paler than ever, the blue veins shining against the translucency of her skin. Understanding caught at her then, and she whispered, “Madam, we are your true servants. . . .”
Elizabeth said, “God deliver me, I have known many such.” The husky voice went deeper. “I shall pray for our country as is both meet and proper.” Then she went running toward her people, laughing and waving the flower in her white hand.
Back at the oak Charles was saying, “ . ..a failure, nothing. I have served a chimera. What is left? Let us go from this place before the guards come in pursuit of traitors.”
Julian cried, “She is a prisoner in all but name. Did you not hear? She thinks we are sent to trap her into giving away her ambition. Charles, she but dissembles as we did while held captive. It could be her death warrant, a return to the Tower, if she were proven to be seeking the throne before her time. That is why she spoke so.”
“What is that to me? The princess I thought I served would dare much for this land as we have done. Now I care no longer what she is!”
Julian looked out at the meadow where the group was just vanishing into the oak park where the great trees lifted into the early sky. The sun caught the red hair of the princess and made it flame, then she was gone and the morning was the dimmer. She felt emptied of all emotion. They had planned this day for so long, and now there was nothing. The despair that has been the bane of philosopher and common folk alike took her and went with them all as they fled from Hatfield Park.
Charles was as a man maddened in the next few days. He was physically with them but mentally apart; he said little, but the pace he kept was furious and anger blazed from all his actions. When they halted for the day he would walk on and return late to fling himself down away from them all. Julian had tried reason, comforting, even anger, but he merely looked through her. His pain was evident, but he was not such a one to reveal himself as he had done before the princess.
“The wound will heal, but you must let it be.” Armita spoke the words that should have given Julian some measure of consolation, but it was not so.
“He has always been wounded; I thought it healed, at least in part, by the caring we have shared. Now I know better.”
“There is another thing.” Armita straightened the kerchief she wore over her black hair and watched Julian carefully. “Yarno and Sedril both want to go on to the Welsh lands before the weather starts to turn. We have tried and failed to change anything. Now life must be lived again.”
Julian knew what she was saying, but she had only intended to go with the gypsies if Charles raised the standard of rebellion. The wanderings of the summer, the fierce lovings in the greenwood, the laughter and camaraderie they all shared, this could not last in the blasts of the winter that all felt would be severe. She was torn anew and wondered what to say to Charles.
The next day he said it for her. She was wearing the pink gown of the meadow and had gone down by the stream where they were encamped to fetch water but paused to stare into its swirling depths. The wind blew her loose hair over her shoulders and added a shower of yellowing leaves to the water. She sighed and turned to see Charles standing, cold and remote, just behind her.
“I have come to say farewell to you, madam. I understand that you mean to go with our friends into the Welsh country. It may be the wisest thing to do. You have the coins, the few jewels. Who knows what will happen in time? I wish you well.” He spoke as to a casual friend, little better than stranger.
“Where are you going? Can you leave so coldly, Charles?” The fierce spurting anger rose in her as it always did with him, generally the precursor to passion. This icy man had no memory of warm flesh and tender words, shared laughter under a scented bush.
“I am for the Continent, madam, and whatever army will have me. In plain words, a mercenary is welcome everywhere. Let England settle its own battles. You were certainly right there. By my own foolishness I lost Varfair and destroyed the good offices of a peer of the realm. Those who hire my sword will not be squeamish, nor shall I.” The smile that spread over the lower part of his face was not a pleasant one; it was the smile of the wolf ready to rend and tear.
Did he care so little for her that he would let her go without a word of caring? After all that they had endured and been to each other? By all the gods, it should not be! She knew in some obscure way that he sought his own death, that the rejection by the woman for whom he had believed himself fighting was the final push in something that had begun with the refusal of the grandmother to let him wed Beth and which had taken firmer hold with her death. He must have a cause, this man of ideals; his own wish was never enough. Now, without a pivot, he would take the foreign sword and welcome it, never knowing but flight. He had put England in Beth’s place, loved her, and been rejected. What had she, Julian Redenter, stood for in his mind?
Needed a cause, did he, by the manifold wounds of Christ she would give him one! “If that is your wish, I would not dissuade you. However, I cannot go to the mountains. My mother had a difficult time, and I rather fancy that I shall as well, for I am narrow.” She lifted limpid eyes to his and waited. Everything hung on his reaction now. Perhaps he did not even care enough to have one.
Not for nothing had Charles carried in his mind that image of Beth and her extremity all the years. His face went bone-white under the bronze, and the wind stirred his dark hair so that it stood up like a crest. “You are saying ... ? What are you saying? Now you say it?”
Go carefully. “I am saying to the father of my child that I cannot winter in the mountains of Wales. That difficult births are well known in my family. That he will be born in the spring.”
They were both very quiet as they looked at each other. Not far away Tasa was playing, her voice coming to them high and shrill over the lapping of the water. Another shower of leaves drifted past their faces, and the sun rested gently on Julian’s shoulders. Beyond the trees a heavy cloud presaged rain,
“You are certain?” The odd, croaking voice was unlike the self-assured tones of Charles Varland. “Your flux, well, you are certain?” He stopped and the coldness, that deadly thing, was fading. Emotion other than anger and disdain was coming to the surface.
“A woman knows these things, Charles. And I will say to you that while Julian Redenter may hold no claim on you or your affection, our child has the first and deserves the second. I am
strong, of course, but I remember my mother’s tales in the days of her illness. She wanted a son for the line so very much!” The old resentment stirred in her voice, causing Charles to watch her closely. “Must I ask it? Will you not give?”
“We have suffered much, Julian. With things the way they are I can offer you nothing but my presence, and that I give right willingly for what it is worth. We will stay in England this winter, hide away as best we can, and after the babe is born we will go to France or the Low Countries. I may still have some friendships I can call upon there so that you and the child will be safe. Then I will go to the wars.” He put both hands on her shoulders. “I wish you were not with child, but since you are, there is no more to be said.”
All neatly planned in the space of a few sentences! Everything neatly arranged and prepared as if he had thought long on it! Faith, if she were but a man! But he had not flung her away in anger or cried her harlot, had he? He did not offer to wed her, but he had warned her of that long ago. All that she had hoped to accomplish was done, so why did she want to fling herself to the ground and weep?
“I am grateful for your consideration, sir.” She pushed back the tumbling hair with fingers that suddenly shook. “We shall try not to delay you unduly in your haste to make war.”
“You like it no more than I, I know. It is done and I am here. Now, do not weep, it is bad for you. Come along and I will find some wine for you.” He was speaking normally now, and the mask of anger with which he had faced them all in the past days had faded.
“Go, I will be along in a few minutes.” She waved her hands at him as if in agitation and finally he obeyed, his tall form vanishing in the leaves.
Her time was bought and won. She would not think of the form retribution would take. Later, when Charles truly did go to war, he would at least be more aware of the scars within himself and more able to deal with them. What of herself? Would her own scars, old and fresh alike, heal?
