Royal Mistress

by Anne Easter Smith

  At the mention of Will, Jane removed her hand. “Lord Hastings is a kind man. My own father, however, was never kind.”

  Edward made a mental note not to reveal to his friend that Jane’s regard for him was paternal and nothing more. He relaxed, relieved that Will was not a rival for Jane’s affections.

  “Your father was unkind?” Edward asked. “Tell me about your family, Jane.”

  “Occasionally he would lash out,” Jane acknowledged. “He doted on my little sister, Isabel, but he found fault with everything I did and said. I suppose I was headstrong, and I disappointed him. My tongue often gets me into trouble and has frightened off suitors. Until William. And ’tis only because he is ambitious that he took me. He had avoided marriage, and now I know why.”

  Edward took her into his arms and played with her long hair. “Do you hate Shore?”

  “Nay, my lord. I do not hate the man, but I hate the position he has put me in. I am unloved, unfulfilled, and am denied the joy of motherhood. How I long for my own babes.” She teased him then, smiling. “You, on the other hand, have enough children to relinquish one or two.”

  “Aye, I have a quiverful already, Jane,” Edward said softly. “My wife has suffered my philandering all these years, but she will not tolerate another bastard.” His voice turned serious. “You understand what I am saying, do you not? I would have to send you from court.”

  Jane sat up with a start and swung her legs over the side of the bed, noticing the floor was a long way down. “Send me from court? Do you mean you intend to see me again?”

  It was Edward’s turn to smile. “Certes, I do and often. I cannot remember when I have been so at ease with a woman,” he said, but did not add “except for Bess.” He got up and came around to help her to the ground, holding her from him to again drink in the curves and smoothness of her body. “By God, but you are beautiful. You know you have a colt’s tooth, do you not?”

  Jane laughed. “A colt’s tooth, your grace?”

  “It means a youthful and sensual vigor. You make me feel young again.” He went to the table and picked up the necklace. Aye, Jane thought watching him, he may have eaten too much and lost his famous athletic figure, but he had not lost his sexual prowess. Tenderly, Edward clasped the necklace around her throat and bent and kissed first one breast and then the other.

  “Time for you to go, Mistress Shore. You should be home when your husband returns. I hope he will not be too angry that his jaunt to Kent was for naught. I found out too late the customer I had arranged for him to see has been in Bruges this past fortnight.”

  Jane was again enjoying touching the satiny surface of the pearl and her eyes grew wide. “You arranged for him to go away?” Why was she not surprised? “Certes, I should have known.” Aye, there was much she should have known, she realized wistfully.

  Edward had already pulled on his chemise and was motioning for her to dress. “Draw the curtains about the bed, Jane, and I will send a tiring woman to you. One of my esquires will be here to help me, and I would protect you from gossip.” For now, he refrained from adding. He vowed to teach Jane Shore more about the art of love and life at court; she was a most apt pupil. He was also already dangerously close to falling in love.

  Edward put his head out of the door and called to a page who was waiting in the corridor. “Find Sir Walter and send him to me here.” Gathering up his discarded clothes, he watched as Jane slipped the fine lawn chemise over her head, concealing that luscious body. On her part, Jane wondered what the tiring woman would make of the stranger wearing a valuable necklace in the king’s bed.

  “Am I allowed to keep the necklace, your grace?” Jane suddenly wondered.

  “Foolish girl, you did not need to ask,” Edward said, impressed that she did not expect it. This was a young woman of good breeding, he mused, pleased with his choice. It did not occur to him that he was selfishly ruining yet another gentlewoman’s reputation. “Norrys will escort you home, Jane, and you will hear from me ere long, I promise you.” He took her in his arms and kissed her. “You have pleased your king well.”

  “But did I please the man?” Jane asked, feeling fearless.

  Edward put her down, grinning. “Aye, him, too.”

  “Then I am content, for you have surely made a woman of me.”

  There was a knock on the door. “I regret I must leave you. Pull the bed curtains around you while I am being dressed. May God go with you until we meet next.”

  “So, you mean it. I am to return?”

  Edward nodded happily. “Certes, you shall return, and the sooner the better. Now quick, back into bed with you.” He pulled a face. “I regret I cannot join you.”

  All the way home, Jane heard the words “the sooner the better” repeated in her head. From her litter, she watched Londoners going about their business, and she was astonished that they did not stop and stare at her. Could they not see into her heart and know her as a royal mistress? she wondered. How different she felt, and whole. The tryst had lasted but an hour and yet her life had changed. She touched her breasts under her mantle, marveling that they had known the king’s lips upon them.

  She had but one regret: the man who had taken her maidenhead was not the man she believed she loved. In her mind, she had betrayed Tom with Edward, yet, oddly she did not feel guilty. Instead her head was digesting the incredible fact that three men desired her, and none was her husband. Who could blame her for succumbing to the king; had he not desired her from the first day they met?

  There was no turning back, she realized with grim resignation. She was now a whore, a wagtail, a wench, whether with a king or a yeoman. Perhaps her father had been right all along, she had to admit. One thing was certain, now Jane had tasted the joy of lovemaking, she had no intention of living without it.

  As she crossed behind St. Paul’s, Jane forced herself to invent a plausible story for her absence should William have returned early. Would William be able to tell she was no longer the wife to whom he had bidden farewell earlier in the day? Would her face betray her? And what if it did, she suddenly thought. She could be such a silly goose! Yet she feared her husband’s displeasure. Certes, she would not dare to tell him with whom she had dallied, but if William suspected she had been unfaithful, mayhap he would cast her off. For a second she rejoiced that she had solved her problem and chided herself for not thinking of it before, but then reason stepped in. Aye, and where would that put her? Out on the street, she mused ruefully, because where could she go? Her parents would disown her, Sophie had her own worries with so many mouths to feed, and the only aunt she knew who might take her in lived in Devon. Nay, she must not allow William to suspect a thing.

  Turning up Coleman Street, she settled on a lie, but as it turned out, William was not home yet. Relieved, she ordered hot water be brought upstairs for her bath. When her husband did arrive, he heard her happily singing and splashing in the copper tub in her solar. William was relieved; he was in too foul a mood to seek his wife’s company, and he shut himself in his closet to brood over who had sent him on a fool’s errand that day.

  Another man had been sent on a similar errand that morning, but Tom Grey had chosen to ignore his stepfather’s request to examine a new courser somewhere in the wilds of Essex. Instead, he happened to be standing in a covered stairwell opposite the king’s lodgings as Jane Shore left by the back staircase.

  “God’s teeth,” he seethed, understanding immediately why the lady was being led quickly to the litter waiting in the courtyard and whisked out into the village of Westminster with only one knight as escort. “The king has seduced my sweet Jane.” No wonder Edward had wanted him gone. Hastings must have given away Tom’s interest in Mistress Shore all those months ago, and he cursed his father-in-law. How had Edward even found Jane? His surge of temper surprised him. He had been so sure that Jane loved him, but if she had given herself to that paunchy lecher, then why had she refused him? Because he had not entered into her fantasy of courtly love? He
scowled. Come now, Jane, he thought, you cannot believe Edward will play the courtly lover for you. The only game he wants to play is hide-and-seek with his cock.

  Tom slammed his fist on the balustrade, turned on his heel, and stalked back into the building.

  SIX

  LONDON, MARCH TO JUNE 1476

  Lord Hastings watched the mercer William Shore walk toward him in an antechamber of the king’s lodgings at Westminster and wished himself back in Calais.

  Edward’s letter had sounded urgent, and the chamberlain and captain of Calais had reluctantly removed himself from his comfortable quarters at the castle to cross the angry channel at the end of February. Suffering horribly from seasickness on the overlong voyage, he had spent two days recovering at a Dover inn before journeying to London. The road was treacherous following all the rain, and once when his horse had stumbled so badly, Hastings had been pitched off into the mud and had hurt his shoulder. Edward better have a good reason to have called him back, Will had thought, accepting Nicholas Knyveton’s dry cloak and bundling his own into a saddlebag. He grimaced now as he remembered the scene in Edward’s private closet, where he and the king often spent time talking over the day’s events.

  “Certes, ’twas important, my lord,” Edward had said, annoyed that Will was not as pleased to be home as the self-centered king thought he should be. “It has to do with the health and well-being of your sovereign. Is that not reason enough?”

  Will had bowed. “I am here to do as I am bidden, your grace. You know full well I am your loyal councilor and friend and always shall be. What is it you require of me?”

  “Unbend, man!” Edward cajoled, never peevish for long, and was mindful not to clap his friend upon his uninjured shoulder. “I am sorry that you were green on board ship, but that was days ago. I have a delicate task in mind that I can trust to you alone. You are the finest diplomat I have, Will, saving perhaps Jack Howard, but he is my brother Richard’s friend, not mine. You are my friend, and I count on you. Besides, you have knowledge that makes you the perfect person to bring this mission to a satisfactory conclusion.”

  What had drawn the two men together over the years was a love of risk, intrigue, and the pursuit of pleasure. At once, Edward’s conspiratorial tone made Hastings forget his unpleasant journey. He leaned forward in his seat and waited to know what task Edward intended for him. He need not worry about Calais for a spell; Calais was in good hands, he knew—Jack Howard was his deputy, and the king had just praised the Suffolk councilor’s skills. He was aware that Edward was in rare form by the slap on the back he had received, by the coin he had thrown to a page for bringing him wine, and now he was grinning from ear to ear.

  “You are in good humor, I see, my friend,” Will had remarked, jovially. “What have I been missing since I left London? And has it anything to do with my ‘mission’?”

  “Am I so transparent, Will?” Edward had laughed—a little too heartily, Hastings thought now. “I have never felt better, in truth. And I have you to thank, in part. Aye, I am coming to it, never fear. A little more than a month ago, I made the acquaintance of your paragon, Mistress Shore. Jane Shore.”

  The lord chamberlain had not been aware that his expression had changed, but Edward’s tone told him. “I see I have touched a wound, my lord. You told me she had rejected your advance, and it so happened I received the mercers here one day and was transported by her beauty.”

  “Aye, I am sure you were, your grace.” Hastings had tried not to think of Jane during those weeks in Calais, but there was no denying the ache he felt for the charming young merchant’s wife. He had cursed his age, thinking it the reason for Jane’s rejection. Could Edward’s dozen years fewer have made him more attractive? Nay, he had to admit to himself, it was more than that. Will did not have Edward’s allure—not only was the blond giant handsome, easygoing, and a practiced lover, but he was the king. Nevertheless, Hastings was a man, and a man in love, and thus he had had a hard time suppressing his anger that Edward would go behind his back and snatch Jane away. He had pretended to be engrossed in scratching the proffered belly of Edward’s wolfhound while he struggled to control his temper.

  Might this be the time to remind Edward that his chamberlain was keeping safe the king’s dirty little secret, that Edward had promised marriage to the beautiful Eleanor Butler to get her into his bed and then had conveniently forgotten the precontract, or promise of marriage, when he fell for and married Elizabeth? Edward had felt relief when poor jilted Nell had died forgotten in a nunnery, Will well remembered. And he remembered the drunken night when Edward and he were in exile in Bruges and the king had confided in his best friend. “Not even Bessie knows, Will, and you must swear by all that is holy that you will tell no one.”

  Will had wondered then what Elizabeth might say or do if she ever found out the precontract by law rendered her marriage to Edward bigamous and her children bastards. It would not be pretty, he had thought with grim humor. Neither man had spoken of it since, and so, in a quick slap to the hound’s scrawny haunch, Will had decided then and there that Mistress Shore was not worth the loss of his king’s confidence. After all, he was Edward’s loyal and devoted liegeman first; he owed all he had attained to his younger master. So he put on a smile and encouraged Edward to tell of Jane’s first visit. At the mention of her maidenhead, Will had reacted with surprise, and Edward had nodded and agreed: “I did not believe it either.”

  Poor Jane, Will thought now while pretending to read a document and making her impotent husband wait. He could not help but wish he were the one to cuckold this pasty-faced mercer, but when it came to Edward, Hastings would not be disloyal, and he had decided he could champion Jane just as well by being her friend. The baron was a man of his word, and he would never break his unspoken promise to her on the hill at Greenwich. Thus it was for Jane’s sake as much as for his sovereign’s that he was standing here now with William Shore. Jane needed to be rid of the man.

  Shore finally cleared this throat, and Hastings looked up, an eyebrow arched.

  “You sent for me, Lord Hastings? How can I be of service?” He smiled, rubbing his hands. “A new gown perhaps?”

  Hastings forebore to laugh at the man’s blindness. “Master Shore, it has come to the council’s notice that your wife has been seeking an”—he paused before slowly pronouncing—“annulment.” Ah, that elicited a glimmer of something akin to concern, he observed. “I shall not go into the reason for it; that is between husband and wife, but I am advising that you do not challenge the petition.”

  Shore’s mouth opened and closed twice before he asked, “How do you know of this?”

  “Very little goes on in London that the council does not know,” Hastings lied airily. “Having made your wife’s acquaintance, I offered to expedite the process.”

  Shore was so taken aback by this turn of events that he merely stammered: “I see, my lord.”

  And now for the unsavory business of bribing him, Hastings thought, grimacing. He walked away a pace and without looking at Shore, stated: “It is my understanding that you have been looking into merchant adventuring. Am I correct?”

  The mercer, perturbed by Hastings’s knowledge yet intrigued by the turn in conversation, stammered, “You are, my lord.”

  The evident eagerness in his voice disgusted Hastings. Was the man not even going to pretend to fight for Jane?

  “If I procure a place for you and fund your move to Bruges, will you grant your wife the annulment—upon the grounds originally sought?” There, he had said it, and hoped Nicholas, who was standing silently in a corner, did not lower his high opinion of his lord.

  Shore’s gap-toothed stare accompanied his weak “Aye, my . . . my lord.” He wanted to ask why, but his thoughts were not organized.

  “And if I effect this move, sir, I must have your word you will deal no more with Mistress Shore, other than returning those goods and chattels she is owed.” Hastings could not believe the man did not appear to wo
nder why the lord chamberlain would involve himself in such a mundane business, but if he did not seek an explanation, then none would be forthcoming.

  “I agree, my lord,” the seemingly incurious man said as he signed the paper Hastings laid for him on the table. As he began meticulously dotting the i’s in his name, he suddenly hesitated and looked up. Ah, perhaps now the man would finally demand an explanation, Hastings thought. But instead, it seemed the mercer had his own condition that had nothing to do with Jane. “I must see to my business for a few more months before transferring to Flanders. I cannot go immediately; I have apprentices and journeymen to make provision for.” It was only then that something else occurred to him. “Where will my wife go? Her father will not have her back, I can promise you,” he said with disdain to no one in particular, “for it would not surprise me if she has lain with others, and neither he nor I would condone a wagtail abiding with us.”

  Hastings was not prepared for his own indignation; with uncharacteristic rashness, he struck William across the mouth. “Leave now, Master Shore, or I may rescind my offer,” he menaced and was relieved when his victim, clutching his bruised face, fled from the room.

  “Good riddance, you weedy, whey-faced puttock!” he barked at the closing door.

  Dean Reynking gave a loud sniff and wiped his dripping, bulbous nose on his sleeve. “You have friends with influence, I perceive, Mistress Shore,” he said, staring at Jane over the top of his spectacles. “I have here the papal approval for an annulment. ’Tis astonishing how quickly it was obtained—only four months; these things usually take years. It appears you are released of your marriage contract as of today, if you would but sign this paper.”

  Jane took the proffered quill and, smiling triumphantly, carefully inked her name: Elizabeth Shore, finishing with several curling loops below the final e. It pleased her that she had been able to flout this rheumy old priest’s patriarchal prating about church law.