A Crowning Mercy

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Why?”

  “The good citizens of Oxford, in their love for the King, have doubled, re-doubled, and doubled again the cost of a room. However it seems that Lord Tallis has given Lady Margaret Lazender a lavish part of his house. This way.”

  He knew his way about Oxford, leading her confidently to a narrow street near the city center. Mason pointed to a house and Devorax stopped outside. “Put her baggage down.” He looked at her. “This is it.” He leaned from the saddle and thumped on the door.

  Campion was excited, barely able to contain her joy at the reunion. She waited for the door to open.

  Devorax scowled and knocked again.

  The door opened and a maidservant looked timidly at the tall, grim soldier. “Sir?”

  “Were you asleep, girl?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Is Sir Toby Lazender here?”

  “He’s out, sir. Lady Margaret’s here, sir.”

  Devorax nodded down at Campion’s baggage, then spoke again to the maid. “Take it inside, girl. Hurry!” He looked at Campion, standing by the door. “In you go.”

  “Aren’t you coming in?”

  “What for? You think I want to make polite conversation?”

  She shook her head, made to feel uncomfortable again. “I must thank you, sir.”

  “True. Have you got the seal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look after it.” He gathered his reins and turned his horse. “I’ll send you a message when I need you. Don’t expect anything to happen soon.”

  She tossed her head, offended by his offhand manner. “I don’t expect anything, sir.”

  “Good girl!” He laughed. “Never expect anything! Then you’ll never be disappointed.” He seemed pleased. “And one last piece of advice.”

  “Sir?”

  “Stay away from the damned Puritans. They hate beauty.” With that he rowelled his horse, the hooves sparked on the cobbles, and he was gone. Campion was astonished, staring after the retreating troop. Had that been a compliment from Vavasour Devorax?

  “Miss?” The maid was nervous. “Miss?”

  “Is Lady Margaret in?”

  “Yes, miss.”

  “Take me.”

  She was nervous, excited, a hundred thoughts and emotions crowding her brain. She followed the maid down a long, gloomy, panelled passage and waited as the door was knocked. An imperious, familiar voice answered.

  “Come!”

  “Miss?” The maid held the door open.

  Campion hesitated. The voice came louder.

  “Who is it? Am I supposed to guess?”

  Campion went in slowly, almost hesitantly. There had been moments when she had dreamed of this meeting, when the thought of Lady Margaret and her son had made the horrors of the Tower seem less real, but she had never thought again to see the aquiline face with the gray, piled hair or hear the impatient, ordering voice. Campion stood facing the garden room and smiled. “Lady Margaret?”

  “Child!” And suddenly Lady Margaret was hugging her, clinging to her, saying unintelligible things in her ear, and Campion clung to the older woman until she was pushed gently away. Lady Margaret shook her head. “You’re crying, child! I thought you’d be glad to see me!”

  “You know I am.” She was crying for sheer happiness and relief. They hugged again, and then talked as though they had only five minutes to meet. Campion was laughing and crying, talking and listening, clinging to the older woman’s hand.

  Lady Margaret pulled off the bonnet and poked at Campion’s hair. “You look quite dreadful, child. Didn’t anyone cut your hair?”

  “Dear Lady Margaret! They almost burned me alive. I didn’t have time for hair!”

  “Yes, dear, but we should always try to look our best when we die. First impressions are very important, Campion, and God may look on the inward things, but he’s more of a fool than I think if he doesn’t take a peep at the outer things as well.” She turned to a table and rang a bell. “We shall take some wine, dear, then clean you up before Toby comes back.”

  A door opened and Enid, Lady Margaret’s own maid, came in. “Lady Margaret?” She saw Campion, put her hands to her face in surprise and looked as if she would cry.

  “Enid!” Lady Margaret frowned, enjoying herself. “Have you seen a mouse?”

  “It’s you!” Enid ran into Campion’s embrace.

  Campion hugged her. “Enid?” She wanted to cry again because of the welcome, the pleasure, the sense of being home.

  Lady Margaret sniffed. “It’s hardly the Holy Ghost, Enid. Say something intelligent to Campion.” She smiled as Campion embraced Enid, waited until they had talked for a moment, and then ordered a bottle of malmsey wine. “And after that, Enid, we’ll have to do something with Campion’s hair.” She frowned at the dress. “It’s nice of you to be in mourning for Sir George, dear, but I think something a little more joyful for Toby.”

  Campion thought it best not to mention that the mourning had been for Old Tom. “How is Toby?”

  Lady Margaret sat down, back straight and head high. “He swings between extreme misery when he believes you will not get here, and unseemly joy when he decides that you might. I can’t think why. There are some perfectly beautiful and eminently well-born girls in this town, some of them with adequate busts. You’ve lost weight, dear. There’s one girl in particular I tried to introduce, Lady Clarissa Worlake, but Toby’s very stubborn. I can’t think why.”

  Campion smiled. “Do you really want him to marry Lady Clarissa?”

  Enid had brought the wine into the room. “She’d have killed him if he had.”

  “Enid! I’ve had occasion to correct you in the past!”

  “Yes, my Lady.” Enid smiled over Lady Margaret’s shoulder, then handed them each a glass of the sweet wine.

  “How’s his wound?” Campion asked.

  “He’s lost two fingers,” Lady Margaret held up the two small fingers of her left hand, “which embarrasses him. He wears a glove. His shoulder’s very stiff, but truly his recovery was remarkable. I quite thought he’d die on the way here.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “I thought you were happy talking to me!”

  “I am, Lady Margaret, you know I am! As happy as I could be!”

  “I doubt that, child, but you said it very prettily. Toby won’t be back till evening, so we’ve plenty of time. You must tell me everything. You can leave, Enid, that table’s quite adequately dusted.”

  They talked through the afternoon, still talking as Lady Margaret and Enid cut and curled her hair. Caroline, who would have done it, was staying with her sister and brother-in-law. There was only Lady Margaret, Toby, and one servant apiece in Oxford. Lady Margaret chose a dress from among those Marta Renselinck had purchased and gave it grudging approval. She gave the story of the seals and the Covenant much greater approval. “So you’re rich?”

  “If I assemble three seals.”

  “It’s very useful for a girl to be rich.” She had refused to take Campion’s money draft, saying it must go to Sir Toby as head of the household. “You say that noisome little toad Cony has two of the seals?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that quite horrid brother of yours is helping him?”

  Campion straightened her stomacher, looking at herself in a long mirror. “You haven’t heard the best news.”

  “Tell me, child.”

  Campion turned to face Lady Margaret. “I’m not a Slythe.” She blushed, not sure whether the truth was such good news to a prospective mother-in-law. “I’m one of Kit Aretine’s bastards.”

  Lady Margaret, with her penchant for genealogy and erudition about the most extraordinary families, loved it. “Kit Aretine! Your father! I’m so glad, dear, I’m so glad! I’ve often thought I didn’t want Slythe blood in my grandchildren, but Aretine blood is really quite acceptable. There’s Scottish blood there, but that can’t be helped.”

  “Scottish?”

  “Sweet Lor
d, yes! Kit’s mother was a McClure, with some heathenish name like Deirdre. A pretty woman, I believe, but definitely Scotch, though I think she lived long enough in England to lose the worst of that legacy.” She sniffed in disapproval of all things Scottish. “So Kit’s your father!”

  “Yes.”

  “And on the wrong side of the blanket! Well, we’ll just have to ignore that. He always was a scoundrel. He was put in the Tower.”

  “For calling King James ‘that Scottish thistle of ungendered prick.’”

  “You acquired some very charming language in prison, child.” Lady Margaret sniffed. “Where is your father now?”

  “In America, Maryland. If he’s alive.”

  “I see.” It was obvious that the mention of America did not impress Lady Margaret unduly. “Will he come looking for you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I hope his language has improved if he does. I imagine not. One can’t think that the settlements are anything but uncouth.”

  “I’m not sure I want him to come.”

  “Don’t be so very stupid, Campion. Kit Aretine was said to be the most handsome and witty of men. I’ve always wanted to meet him.” She stepped away. “You look quite passable. Let me get you some earrings. And pinch your cheeks, child, you need color.”

  They sat in the garden, between shady pear trees and Campion listened to the story of Lazen Castle and of how Sir Grenville Cony had expelled the family. The Lazenders, Lady Margaret said, were ruined. Their lands were gone, their money, their home too. Charles Ferraby, the ox-eyed boy who was to marry Caroline, had withdrawn his hand. No one needed a penniless bride. Only Lord Tallis, an old friend of Sir George, had offered help.

  Hooves sounded at the end of the garden, a voice called out and a gate slammed. Lady Margaret cocked an ear. “That’s Toby, dear. Hide yourself.”

  “Hide?”

  “Of course! You should always surprise your men, it keeps them interested.”

  There was a grassy space between high bushes, a space hidden from the house, and Campion waited there through the seconds that seemed like eternity. Her heart was thumping. She felt excited, as though she was a small child playing a thrilling and secret game. She heard boots in the passage that led beside the garden to the house, the sound of a door, and then, muffled but distinct, the sound of his voice. She had a sudden, terrible memory of the Tower, of the rats scrabbling on a cold, foul floor, and then Lady Margaret’s commanding voice dragged her back to this lilac-shaded garden. “Go into the garden, Toby. I wish to talk with you.”

  She heard his footsteps on the flagstones that bordered the lawn. Then silence. She waited. His voice came again. “Are you coming, mother?”

  “In a moment, Toby. Don’t be tedious. Tell me the time.”

  His boots sounded again, this time muffled by the grass. Campion tried to compose herself, to make her face serene and calm. She patted the ringlets of her hair, and then she could see him, his hair red in the sun, his left hand gloved. He was dressed in black. He stopped at the sundial. “It’s nearly half past six, mother!” He turned, getting no reply, and saw the blue dress beneath the lilacs.

  “Toby?”

  She could not be calm, she could not be serene. His strong face was showing astonishment, joy, and then they were in each other’s arms, his maimed hand was about her shoulders and her face was buried on his chest. “Toby!”

  “You’re here.” He tipped her face up, and then kissed her tenderly, almost in wonderment as if he did not believe it. “Campion?”

  They kissed again, this time as if they would crush the one into the other, never to let go, never again to be parted. She held on to his rough, leather armor, clinging to him as if to life itself.

  Lady Margaret’s voice came from the house. “Toby!”

  “Mother?”

  “You might do that where your mother is not forced to watch.”

  He grinned at his mother over Campion’s head, then kissed again. Campion could not have cared if the whole world watched. She was home.

  Twenty-seven

  Expect nothing, Vavasour Devorax had said, yet hope as she might Campion could not have expected this.

  A summer that would live forever in her memory, a summer heavy with scent and fruit, with leaf and harvest, a summer for love.

  Campion Aretine, as Lady Margaret insisted she should be called, would marry Sir Toby Lazender in one month’s time. The banns were read in church and no one saw any cause or just impediment why the two should not be joined in holy matrimony. From the Tower, from the road that led to the waiting stake, her life twisted suddenly into an incessant round of parties, dancing, feasts, of people who seemed to share her happiness even though she had never met them. If her life was, indeed, a river, then it had plunged from the dark caverns of brooding terror into this broad, sunlit reach. Yet the sky above was not the seamless blue of her dreams.

  She had never seen a place like Oxford. Its towers and courtyards, steeples and archways, all bore witness to a love of beauty that would have been an anathema to Matthew Slythe. All that beauty was threatened. The royal cause was foundering, the King’s army on the defensive, and not even Campion’s sudden happiness could hide from her the shadows that threatened Oxford. Yet that summer it was a golden city to her. She did not notice the stench in the streets, the effluence of a crowded city. She saw only a place of beauty that men had embellished and endowed with grace. She was in love.

  Yet even in the broad, sunlit land through which her river flowed, a land green and scented, profuse with a thousand flowers, another shadow reached out from the past. The men who were drunk on God did not just shatter visible beauty, they had also mounted an attack on her innocence. Faithful Unto Death Hervey’s dry, scaly hands had put filth within her and the filth was still there. She knew it in herself, it poisoned part of her, and she felt it on a day, late in August, when Toby was released from his garrison duties and they rode westward, alone, out into the countryside.

  War seemed far off that day. The land was generous, its grass heavy and crops full. The river seemed burdened with life, edged with flowers. It was a day like the day a year ago when she had last swum in her pool at Werlatton, a day when the horizon hazed white with heat, when insects hummed in the still air, a day of perfect beauty marred only by the shadow within her.

  The river had brought her here, but the water was tainted from the caves of horror it had swept her through. The current had been fast and now it was slow, yet she was still fearful. She hid the horror from Toby, pretending it did not exist, yet she feared marriage because Faithful Unto Death Hervey had put a poison in her.

  Toby led her away from the Thames, their horses ambling northward through rich fields and woods to a lush meadow that fringed a stream going south to the Thames. He tethered their horses to a fallen tree and carried a basket to a patch of grass beside the stream.

  They talked as they had talked for three weeks, and it still surprised her how much they could say and how much she liked to talk with him. He amused her, educated her, listened to her, argued with her, and even the smallest thing could throw up a great conversation because they shared a curiosity about their world.

  They ate by the stream, sharing bread and cold meat and drinking wine. Afterward she lay on her back, her head pillowed by her saddle, while Toby lay on his stomach a few feet away. He looked at her. “They’ll know you’re here by now.”

  “Yes.” It was a subject that kept coming back. Sir Grenville Cony, Toby thought, must have his informants in Oxford. The wine had made Campion drowsy. “Can we manage without the seals?”

  “If you want to.” He was picking the tiny petals of clover and touching nectar to his tongue. “Do you want to forget them? Throw this one away?” Toby wore the golden seal about his neck.

  She sighed. “They’ve caused so much trouble. I didn’t ask for them. I didn’t want all this to happen. I didn’t ask for Ebenezer to hate me, and for Cony and for men like Vavasour
Devorax.” She twisted her head to look at him. “I didn’t want to be in the Tower.” She could feel the horror inside her.

  Toby rolled on to his side, wincing as his weight went momentarily on to his damaged shoulder. “You didn’t ask for it, but without the seals you’d probably be married to someone like Samuel Scammell by now. You’d probably have your own little baby Scammell with its own little Bible and its own little scowl.”

  She laughed, turning her face back to the sun. “Yes.” The stream’s murmur was a background to her thoughts. “Poor Scammell.”

  “Poor?”

  “He didn’t ask for it either. He was harmless.”

  “He was greedy.”

  There was silence. The sun was bright on the inside of her eyelids. She heard the horses stirring, a fish plopping in the water. “Do we need the seals, Toby?”

  He rolled back on to his stomach, his dark red hair shading the fine-boned face he had inherited from his mother. He did not reply immediately and Campion turned her face to look at him. She loved his face. It was not, she supposed, a classically handsome face. Eyes would go much faster to a man like Lord Atheldene, but the memory would fasten on Toby. His eyes met hers.

  “Two answers. I’ll marry you if you’re the poorest girl in the kingdom. Second answer. Yes we do. Lazen’s been in the family since anyone knows. I’d like to buy it back one day, God knows when, but I’d like to do it before mother dies.”

  She nodded.

  He smiled at her. “But if you tell me that you don’t want the seals, that you want to be rid of Sir Grenville and your brother, then I’ll throw this one away right now. I’ll marry you and think myself lucky.”

  “Don’t throw it away.” She smiled at him. “We’ll buy Lazen Castle with it.”

  He smiled. “And you’ll be Campion Lazender.”

  She laughed at that. It sounded strange. She remembered how he had seen the campion flowers in her rush basket and picked the name for her. She laughed again. “If I hadn’t met you I’d still be called Dorcas.”