by Kris Tualla
Lizzy completed her attempt at making Jakob presentable and sat back on her heels. “Feeling better?”
“No.” He did though.
Lizzy looked sad of a sudden. “I’m going to miss her fierce.”
Jakob rubbed his brow. “Who?”
“Lady Avery, of course.” She looked at him funny. “Who else might I be speaking of?”
That part made sense, but the first part did not. “Why will you miss her?”
Lizzy tilted her head. “She’s gone, isn’t she. I saw her board the ship myself.”
Jakob couldn’t breathe. “Gone?”
“Aye.”
“Where?”
The whore shook her head. “She would not tell me. Only that she was not coming back.”
Another wave of nausea swamped Jakob. “When?” he rasped.
“Four days now, I think it is.” She gave him a sympathetic look. “Didn’t ye know?”
As if the drink hadn’t numbed him enough, after hearing this news Jakob felt nothing of his body but the roaring surge of his heartbeat. “No.”
He slumped backward once more, hoping the soothing coolness of the grass would keep him from vomiting again. The world spiraled under him, the stars laughed at him, and the girl beside him took a firm hold of him.
“I’m going to play my part,” she murmured as her hand began to stroke him. “And if ye like it, there’ll be no charge.”
Jakob regarded her with shocked disbelief.
“In honor of the lady,” she added.
Jakob hadn’t the strength, nor the will, to stop her. He closed his eyes, unable to move.
Avery is gone.
*****
Jakob’s head throbbed and his mouth tasted just like the floor of the stable smelled. He had fallen asleep on the Hill, with Lizzy standing guard at his side until dawn.
When he awoke, still not sober but able to function a bit more successfully, he gave her every coin he had remaining in his pocket—three times what she normally made in a night. Before he stumbled down the hill to the Tower, he thanked her quite sincerely for her kindness.
Askel had slept in a chair waiting for him. When Jakob finally made his appearance, the valet took one horrified look at him before jumping up to procure a bath and food.
“Dry toast and tea,” he informed Jakob. “Your stomach won’t be able to keep anything else down.”
Jakob slumped onto a wooden chair so as not to ruin one of the upholstered ones with his wet grass-and-mud-stained hose. As Askel helped him undress, Jakob spoke the words which he had prayed all the way back were, in truth, only a bad dream.
“The Lady Avery has left London.”
“Left?” Askel’s expression held every question Jakob had asked.
“Four days ago. Don’t know where. Don’t know why.” His head was still painfully fuzzy. “Can you find out if this is true?”
“Yes, my lord.”
While his rejuvenating bath was being prepared, Jakob munched on the soothing tea and toast. He determined he would talk to Catherine and force the queen—as far as one could force a royal, at any rate—to tell him the truth.
Askel removed the sparse breakfast tray as Jakob lowered himself into the steaming tub. Nothing seemed to help the aftereffects of overindulgence like immersion in water hot enough to sweat the poisons from his frame.
He wondered what he would do if Lizzy’s words were true. That would mean Avery had left him without the simple courtesy of giving him notice. The realization that, in the end, he truly meant so little to her gouged a ragged hollow in his chest.
And yet, that did not make sense.
Avery’s every word and every action toward him demonstrated at the very least a deeply held affection for him. Her refusal to see him, plus the evidence of grief in his presence, were not the reactions of someone who was indifferent to his declarations.
She must love me.
So why did she secret away without a word?
The water had cooled, and Jakob’s extremities had all gone pink and wrinkly before Askel returned. The valet’s face was ashen.
“It’s true, my lord. The Lady Avery sailed four days ago.”
Another portion of his chest hollowed. “Where?”
Askel shook his head. “No one knows for certain, though speculation would suggest she went home to Spain.”
Jakob heaved a sigh, settling his belly a bit more.
“Dress me to see the queen.”
*****
Jakob waited over four hours outside Catherine’s chambers, watching supplicant after supplicant enter and leave without a word for him. He was a stubborn Norseman—as his breed was—and he would not leave this spot until he had a chance to speak with the queen privately.
The clock chimed six bells—the end of the working day, allowing two hours until the formal supper seating. The last person to be ushered in opened the door to leave the queen’s presence, and Jakob strode in.
Permission be damned.
Catherine startled when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”
Jakob bowed deeply. “Forgive me, your Grace, but I have been outside your door these many hours waiting to address you.”
The queen appeared to be caught off her guard and unsure how to proceed. “You have?”
Jakob straightened in time to catch Catherine slice an irritated glance at one of her ladies-in-waiting.
“I—I was not certain that—that you wished to see Sir Hansen,” the woman stammered.
“And that is why you ask me,” Catherine instructed, clearly annoyed. “So I may make that determination myself.”
The woman glanced at Jakob. “Shall I ask him to leave?”
“It is a bit late for that, don’t you think?” the queen ground out, her eyes narrowed. “Leave us.”
The woman hurried out, followed by three other wide-eyed ladies, no doubt each one thanking their stars they were not the one to make the offending gaffe and upset their fecund and emotional sovereign.
Catherine motioned for Jakob to approach, but did not offer him a chair. “What is it you want?”
Clearly this was not going to be a polite exchange. “The truth.”
“What truth?”
“Lady Avery secretly sailed from London four days ago,” he began. “Why?”
Catherine shook her head. “I am not at liberty to say.”
Jakob shifted his weight. Whatever he did last night made his leg sore. “What are you at liberty to say?”
“That the Lady Avery sailed from London four days ago.”
Jakob tried another tack. “Where is she going?”
“Why do you wish to know?”
Jakob scuttled a hand through his hair. It was obvious to him at this moment that perceived friendship with a royal, and actual friendship, were not the same thing.
He looked her in the eye. “Did she tell you that I asked her to marry me?”
Catherine startled visibly. “No.”
“Well, I did.” Jakob straightened his shoulders, gratified to have surprised the queen. “I told her I was willing to go wherever she wanted and make my life fit with hers.”
Catherine stared at him, silent, evaluating. “Are you in love with her?”
Jakob felt the blow of her words in his core, and his knees went weak. He dropped to the carpet in front of Catherine’s chair. “God, yes. More than my English can say.”
“She knows this?” the queen pressed.
Jakob nodded. “I told her. Yes.”
Catherine’s gaze fell to the floor. “I have lost her, too.”
For a moment, Jakob didn’t know how to respond. In his selfish pain, he had not considered the queen’s loss. Avery had been Catherine’s closest friend for all of their lives—of course she was mourning her friend’s sudden absence.
“Will she come back?” This question was for Catherine’s benefit.
“She says she will, eventually, but…” The queen shook her head slowly. “There is no
way to know if that will ever come to pass.”
Jakob sat still, pondering her words. Would Avery have left England, never to return? What circumstance could have brought this to pass?
He stared at the queen. “You won’t tell me why.”
Catherine regarded him sadly, naked pain etched on her face. “Lo siento mucho, mi amigo. I cannot.”
Jakob refrained from snorting—barely—at the designation my friend. “Where did she go?”
Catherine merely shook her head again, her lips pressed in a line.
He climbed slowly to his feet. The weight of her loss piled on top of his, and he needed to escape before he was crushed beyond repair. Perhaps tonight was a night for opium after all.
Jakob did not observe any of the conventions required when leaving the presence of a sovereign; he simply turned around and walked away. Not a single your Grace or your Majesty had crossed his lips after his first sentence.
Arrest me, his thoughts challenged. I do not fucking care.
Jakob yanked the door open and turned around for one last look at Catherine. Her hands covered her face and her shoulders shook with silent sobs. For a moment, he thought about going back to comfort her.
Instead, he left.
*****
Percival Bethington shook Jakob’s shoulder. “There are other beautiful women in the world, my friend. Trust me—I will introduce you to several.”
Jakob wagged his head, merely staring at the stein of ale of front of him. His belly and his emotions were locked in battle, and the winner of the Great Ale War had not yet been decided.
“I do not want a woman, Bethington. I never did,” he admitted. “I was resigned to be alone, and satisfied with my fate.”
“But the Lady Avery changed your mind?” Percival nudged him with an elbow. “I hate to say this, but I believed she just proved that she deserves her title.”
“She is no Ice Maiden,” Jakob muttered. He looked around the empty dining room. Only a few servants remained, cleaning the tables.
The English knight shrugged and finished his ale. “I have yet to see differently.”
Askel appeared in the open double doorway, looking as if he had seen a ghost. Jakob motioned him in. He sprinted forward, sealed message in hand.
“It’s from the king, my lord.”
Jakob frowned and accepted the missive. Both Askel and Bethington stared at him, curious and expectant. Jakob slid his thumb under the seal and dislodged it from the parchment. With a glance at the two men, he unfolded it.
Spain.
It required a few seconds for Jakob to understand what he was looking at. The slant of the writing was wrong, and the quill strokes too delicate.
This note was from Catherine, not Henry.
Then his face split into the first grin in many days. He flipped the brief missive around for the men to see, and shook Percival’s shoulder in return.
“It would seem that we will be on the Lady Avery’s trail.” He shrugged. “I only need a map to find Toledo.”
Percival snorted. “That, and an amount of luck which most men never see in a lifetime.”
Jakob ignored the Englishman’s skeptical words and tucked the note inside his tunic.
I am coming after you, my love.
Postscript:
The dates and locations of Arthur Tudor’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and his premature death are accurate. The dates and circumstances concerning Henry Tudor’s marriage to the widow Catherine, and their co-coronation, are accurate as well. Catherine’s miscarriages and stillbirths are well documented, as are Henry’s many mistresses.
Henry the Eighth gained York Place for his own in 1530, and renamed it Whitehall.
The cupolas on the Tower of London’s turrets were added in 1533, along with gilded and painted weather vanes, as a coronation gift for Anne Boleyn.
Elizabeth “Bessie” Blount did bear Henry the only bastard he ever claimed: Henry Fitzroy (Henry “Son of the King”) who was born on June 15, 1519.
Henry kept his promise to claim Bessie’s bastard, because the truth about Jakob’s deception was never revealed.
Following is an excerpt from Part Two of
The Nordic Knight duet:
A Nordic Knight
of the
Golden Fleece
Chapter One
November 19, 1518
Barcelona, Spain
Jakob Hansen sat astride his weary destrier, Warrior, and gazed down the steep hill at the city of Barcelona, nestled like a sleeping sea lion along the edge of the brilliantly blue Mediterranean Sea.
“Ah. At last.” Sir Percival Bethington turned in his saddle to face Jakob. “After forty days of wandering through France, I feel a bit like the Israelites spying their promised land for the first time.”
Jakob snorted. “Let’s pray that we are not entering something far worse.”
Bethington returned his regard to the city below. “True words, my brother.”
Relief and trepidation warred within Jakob’s gut. The journey through France took longer than they anticipated, mainly because Percival refused to travel on any day that looked as though it might rain.
Jakob rubbed his right thigh. If he was honest with himself, he suspected some of Percival’s refusals were intended to allow him to rest his injured leg. Jakob didn’t want to ask the man outright—to do so might embarrass them both—but he never argued with the English knight when a day devoid of travel was declared.
Jakob smiled a little at the recollections.
Though he was attending the Order of the Golden Fleece to represent King Christian the Second of Denmark and Norway, he had spent the last several months in England serving King Henry the Eighth. As a result, Henry paid for Jakob’s easy passage to Barcelona in the company of his own pampered representative, Sir Bethington.
Spending the two extra weeks elongating their journey at comfortable inns with fine food was in no way a hardship. Only his eagerness to reach Spain and begin his search for the Lady Avery Albergar of Toledo prompted his desire to move forward more quickly.
His leg, on the other hand, greatly appreciated the respite.
Bethington glanced at the hazy sky, pale gray as a dove and hiding the sun, but offering no imminent threat of a downpour. A chilly breeze gusted up the hill, and he tightened his neck scarf.
“We ought to go on now. We still must find the house, and it is well past noon already.”
Jakob nodded, and followed Percival’s steed down the slope. Askel, his lackey, and Denys, Bethington’s man, came behind him, each leading a pair of heavily laden pack mules. The knights had decided to forgo a wagon during this last part of their journey, due to the mountainous landscape.
Jakob had no idea what to expect of the Order, which was meeting in Barcelona Cathedral de Eulalia for the second time in three years, and he had no idea how he would find Avery, who escaped four months ago from England, and headed to somewhere in Spain. But he was greatly looking forward to sleeping in the same bed every night, and spending time in a seat that didn’t rock and sway beneath him.
*****
Locating Barcelona Cathedral proved quite simple. The massive Gothic structure loomed over the city like a giant stone troll waiting to devour the disorderly and disobedient. Once inside its towering walls, Jakob made enquiries of the Spanish priests regarding the location of the leased house which he and Bethington would share while attending the Order’s gathering.
Percival could have done so himself—as the men traveled these past weeks, they spent their mornings conversing in Spanish for practice.
But since losing the language competition to Jakob, and their shared tutor to unexplained circumstances, the Englishman’s confidence in his abilities was dashed.
Not only did the priest give Jakob directions to the house they were leasing, but the knights were presented with wrapped and tied bundles containing the robes they were expected to wear when they attended the Order.
That wa
s unexpected.
Jakob shot a questioning gaze at Bethington, who shook his head and gave a little shrug. The men accepted the packages, and Jakob wondered where they could tie them onto their over-laden mules. He blew an impatient sigh, resigned to carry the bulky thing on his lap.
“You may hesitate in Spanish, I haven’t a care about that. But you will speak to me in Norsk,” Jakob prodded in that language. The men and their entourage were again winding through Barcelona’s angled streets, following the directions given by the priest.
Percival smiled and nodded; their afternoon conversations in the Germanic Norsk flowed much more easily for him than the Romantic Spanish language.
“Ja.”
The men rode northeast along the Carrer de la Princesa, as they were instructed. The northeast end of the narrow road called Carrer dels Assaonadors, where the leased house was located, was said to be less than half a mile from the Cathedral and would prove an easy walk, much to Jakob’s relief.
The street they traversed now was lined with large limestone palazzos; clearly this was an area of the city where the wealthy had chosen to build their homes. The huge houses were graced with an abundance of shuttered windows, many facing the sea in an attempt to catch the capricious breezes which chased each other through these manmade canyons of stone and terracotta.
Most of the houses had inner courtyards—which could be glimpsed through an occasional wrought iron gate—and heavy, tiled roofs.
When the men reached the road called Carrer Montcada, however, they were prevented from continuing their brief journey. A phalanx of men and women stood three or four deep along both sides of that prominent street, blocking their way.
All heads were turned to Jakob’s right. Whatever held their communal interest was approaching from that side, and invisible to Jakob around the edge of the impressive palazzo on the corner.
“What is it?” Percival asked.
