The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  “Because it is Sunday?” asked Tansy, who was standing just outside in the street.

  “Perhaps,” said Sir John hurriedly, thinking that his royal master might consider the day inauspicious.

  But there might well have been some other reason. The King had been standing by his horse, twisting one of the rings on his finger, as if lost in thought. Before taking the reins from his groom he turned and even came back a step or two. “And if a gentleman named Gervase should come, tell him to ride straight to my tent, where the sentries will have orders to let him pass,” he commanded. “A lean, legal gentleman from London, who will have with him a youth of about this wench’s age.”

  For the briefest moment his sword hand rested on Tansy’s shoulder, and then he had drawn on his gloves and sprung up into his saddle and was clattering away at the head of twelve thousand men. Over West Bridge and Bow Bridge he led his army out from Leicester, his standard bearer, Blanc Sanglier, going before, the splendour of heraldry and banners all about him, with Lord Stanley’s less eager army bringing up the rear. So narrow and humped was the further bridge, and so vast the army, that they seemed to be passing endlessly all that Sunday morning over the Soar. The Canon of the Grey Friars came to the river bank to bless them, and an old blind beggar, pushed from his favourite pitch by the jostling press, called cursings after them.

  And somewhere in that endless tide of armed men, closer to the King’s stirrup than Stanley’s reluctant son, rode Robert Marsh, innkeeper and sometime soldier, guiding them along the narrow lanes towards Bosworth.

  Back in the disordered and deserted White Boar a sense of anti-climax oppressed all whom he had left behind, and Tansy’s thoughts followed only him in all that proud throng. “You think my father will be safe?” she asked of her stepmother, who had not witnessed his near collapse the evening before.

  “Safe?” Rose Marsh tossed her brassy curls. “Why should he not be? He has not gone to fight, ninny. Only to show them the way. And the closer he sticks to King Richard the more likely we are to get our money.”

  “And that,” thought Tansy, bitterly, “is all she cares for.”

  3

  Ordinary life was at a standstill in Leicester when the army was gone. Most of the young people had followed after them as far as Bow Bridge. The older people, tired and bewildered by so much excitement, stood about in streets and talked. Battles and rumours of battles up and down the country had disturbed them during all the thirty years of the Wars of the Roses, while Yorkists and Lancastrians took it in turn to wear the crown. There had been bloody fighting at Towton and Tewkesbury. But nothing, since the terrible days of the Black Death, had come so ominously near to them as this.

  Shop-keepers were sold out of food. Housewives left last night’s makeshift beds unmade while for the first time they had time to talk. Hunters went after the wild hogs that roamed the surrounding forests. Although it was Sunday, farmers drove in what cattle they could spare from their grazing lands along the far side of the river, and butchers slaughtered them against the return of more than a thousand hungry men. And in the better inns work had to go on, preparing for the return of the more important guests.

  In the White Boar Dilly was still helping Tansy to make the beds. “All those grand people won’t be back tonight, will they?” she asked.

  “Nor for a couple of nights perhaps,” said Tansy. “I heard one of them telling Mistress Marsh that the two armies probably wouldn’t meet until Monday.”

  “Please God they do meet!” whimpered the little maid shakily. “Suppose this Tudor dragon and his wild Welshmen slipped through in the night and got into the town and raped and murdered us!”

  “Our King is too clever for that,” laughed Tansy. “Pull your side of the coverlet straighter and plump up the pillows. And then we must go down and help serve the customers. All manner of important people are drinking here to-day out of sheer curiosity, and your mistress is single-handed.”

  It was true enough that the inn was crowded, and that the men drinking on Sunday morning looked far more prosperous than the regulars who had sat there Saturday evening. But the landlord’s wife was not single-handed. Tom Hood, the fletcher, was there handing out pints with dextrous enthusiasm, raking in the money and making himself generally useful. With his adaptable energy and ready wit he might have been selling ale instead of arrows all his life.

  “Why, Tom, how kind of you!” exclaimed Tansy, nearly bumping into him as he carried two foaming tankards to no less a personage than the Mayor.

  “Your father passed me on his way, through Applegate, and asked me to lend a hand,” he whispered hurriedly.

  Tansy lost no time in helping, too, until their chattering customers began drifting away reluctantly for their dinners. “Heaven send there be something left in our own kitchen!” she said, suddenly realizing that she had scarcely eaten since dawn.

  “How you can think of food!” exclaimed Rose dramatically, as Jod closed the doors. “I am so exhausted I could swoon. The burden of everything was upon me last evening and now all those members of the City Guild, who haven’t been near us for months, asking impertinent questions about our guests! Whether Lord Lovell is as handsome as they say, and whether he seduced our daughter? What did the King eat? Whether that old wives’ tale was true about his having a withered arm? And what is he going to do with Henry Tudor when he catches him?”

  Tansy crimsoned at her careless words, and Tom Hood turned away tactfully to screw a cask sprigget tighter. “As if he would tell us!” he muttered. “And if that fop Lovell — ”

  But the Mistress of the White Boar had said her say. “I am going upstairs to get some sleep,” she announced — careless of the fact that her young step-daughter would have to cope with the depleted state of their larder.

  “I will send you up some hot caudle or an egg posset,” offered Tansy.

  “Only a light meal. You youngsters can survive all this rush of work, but my stomach revolts against food. Just some breast of duck with peas, and a slice or two of spiced beef. And some of that mulberry tart with cream, if the King’s table left any–”

  As she went towards the stairs Tom straightened himself from the dripping cask and winked at Tansy, turning the annoyance on her face to laughter. “I am ravenous,” she admitted simply. “Let’s sit down and eat.”

  There was nothing he had hoped for more than to be alone with her for a while, but — being a generous young man — he hesitated. “My mother will probably have something ready.”

  “I doubt if she has much in her larder either. And surely cook can find us some remnants from last night’s feast. The labourer is worthy of his hire, you know.”

  When she smiled up at him like that he was defenceless. “My stomach wouldn’t revolt from umbles,” he said, swinging a leg across the bench and sitting down opposite to her. “But take your mistress all that is left of the beef first, Dilly, and for God’s sake see that it is tender!” Dilly grinned at him adoringly, and as soon as she was gone he said, without beating about the bush, “How can you bear living with that woman, Tansy?”

  “Since my father was fool enough to marry her she has even more right to live here than I, I suppose.”

  “He must have been lured by the flesh like many a decent, credulous man before him.”

  “You must admit that she is handsome.”

  “In the way which satisfies a man for an hour and leaves him heart-hungry and pitied by his friends for a lifetime.”

  “You should not say such things, Tom.”

  He shrugged and picked up his knife as Dilly laid a makeshift dish of eggs and beans before them. “I knew your mother,” he reminded her. “When my father beat me for playing with the arrow-butt feathers, she used to comfort me with honey cakes.”

  Although she laughed, Tansy’s eyes were momentarily moist as she looked across the table, seeing him again as the lively, fair-haired little devil she used to play with. “She loved you, and when your father died and left you
far too young to carry on the business she often worried about you.”

  “I was glad to be on my own, and I haven’t done so badly,” said Tom, with the frank self-confidence of his auburn-haired kind.

  They were young and hungry and made short work of the few nourishing scraps which the cook had found them. “And this coming of an army,” said Tansy, after a while. “Were you able to make a profit out of that?”

  “I hoped to. But King Richard does not leave things like weapons to chance. I might have had the sense to guess as much. Instead I wasted time going round to each of his captains and found they were all adequately supplied,” the young fletcher told her ruefully. “But I managed to sell several hundred to some of Stanley’s fellows. An indifferent crowd and half of them Lancastrians at heart, I would say.”

  “And while you might have been busy scraping in a few more sales to stragglers you came and helped us here.”

  “I told you, your father asked me”

  Tansy laid a hand on his wrist beside his plate. “You mean, you suggested it, thinking that we women would be alone.” Tom’s capable hand turned and closed over hers. “I often think of you, Tansy.” Across the table they, smiled into each other’s eyes, but after a moment or two Tansy withdrew her hand. During these last few eventful hours she had had a feeling that life was opening, up before her, and there were so many possibilities and so many likeable young men. For once Tom did not tussle with her reluctance in playful affection, but rose, serious-faced, to fill their tankards. “And when your father comes back and all this commotion is over there is another, more important, suggestion which I shall make to him. About us,” he said. “That is,” he had the grace to add, “if my sale of arrows mounts anything like his sale of ale.”

  Being good Yorkists, they raised their tankards to the King. Tom thanked her for the meal and thought he might be able to persuade the castle steward to let the White Boar have some salted meat — at a price. But, like any up and coming young opportunist, he was in a hurry to be off and improve the profitable, warlike hour. “I am going along there now to talk the castle captain into believing that his emergency supply of arrows is hopelessly inadequate,” he said.

  “You could talk anybody into anything, Tom Hood,” said Tansy, suppressing a yawn.

  “I never seem to succeed with you. But you must rest, my girl. Your cheeks are almost as pasty as Dilly’s.” Briefly he took her face between his hands and kissed her, before pushing her into her step-mother’s cushioned chair. And so tired was she that almost before Dilly had removed their plates and he had closed the inn door, her eyes were closed. Everyone in the White Boar was exhausted, and she must have slept soundly for the best part of an hour when she was awakened with a start by the clatter of horses coming into the yard and someone calling impatiently to Jod, who was shamelessly snoring on a bale of straw.

  Tansy’s first thought was that they should not disturb her step-mother. She suspected that the rest of the day would be uncomfortable for the whole household if they did. So she pulled herself hastily from the softness of the cushions, smoothed down her crumpled gown, and went out to meet them as they came indoors. A lean, stern-looking gentleman followed by a weary and rather bewildered-looking youth of about her own age. “Can I do anything for you, Sirs?” she asked.

  “We heard that his Grace the King stayed here last night,” the middle-aged gentleman said stiffly. “Where has he gone?”

  “Out westwards towards Bosworth. He directed that any stragglers — any followers, I mean — were to be given refreshment and directed how to ride after him,” answered Tansy, thinking how little use either of them would be to him.

  “The refreshment to be added to the royal account,” said the mistress of the inn, flouncing down the stairs ill-pleased, in spite of all Tansy’s precautions.

  The gentleman allowed himself a thin smile and bowed to her. “I fear, Mistress, we shall need a few hours’ rest as well as refreshment. We are from London and have been on the road for days, and this young man is much — er — discomforted. My name is Gervase.”

  Rose’s whole manner changed. “Then the King is expecting you. Last thing before leaving he left a message for you to follow him.”

  “To go straight to his tent, he said,” added Tansy, recalling the King’s words, and almost feeling again the light, insistent pressure of his fingers on her shoulder. At the time she had been too preoccupied with anxiety for her father to pay much heed, but now she remembered perfectly. A tall legal gentleman from London, he had said, with a youth of about her own age.

  “Then it sounds as if we could rest ourselves and our mounts awhile and still catch up with a foot-slogging army before they camp.”

  “Our rooms are all taken,” said Rose, with the air of one accustomed to turning away mere knights. “But since his Grace specially mentioned you I will show you to a room which some of the Duke of Norfolk’s officers used, and where you could snatch a couple of hours’ sleep.”

  “And I will waken you in time for dinner,” promised Tansy, fervently hoping there would be some, and feeling that if this appointment had been so much on a king’s encumbered mind the legal gentleman was behaving with insufficient urgency. Indeed, he seemed so much engrossed at the moment by his hostess’s gracious smile that he forgot to invite his far more discomforted charge to accompany them upstairs.

  “Do you suppose we shall be in time? Before the battle begins, I mean,” asked the youth, as soon as their two elders were gone.

  ‘They say the King is not likely to engage the enemy today, and hopes to intercept him within twelve miles or so, this side of Bosworth.” Tansy was calculating how long it would take Tom Hood to wheedle something reasonably edible from the castle steward, and added rather perfunctorily, “If you are so tired why do you not sit down?”

  There was a slight embarrassed silence. “Because I cannot.”

  “Cannot?” She looked him over from brown head to sensibly shod feet, but there was no sign of any particular disability about his slender, well-grown body.

  For the first time he smiled. “My backside is too sore,” he explained.

  Tansy burst out laughing. “Oh, what a painful predicament! You have ridden too far and your saddle galled?”

  “It must have been made for a fat knight in full armour, I should think! And you heard Master Gervase say we had been jogging along for days. But the fact is,” he added, with a rather charming candour, “I have never ridden before.”

  “Not ridden before!” Leicestershire-bred Tansy looked amazed.

  “Until a few days ago I was still at school,” he confessed.

  “I see. What is your name?”

  “Dickon.”

  Invitingly, Tansy rearranged the cushions in Rose’s chair to the best advantage of his bruised anatomy. “And in London, of course, one would scarcely need to ride. But surely on holidays — at home with your parents — ”

  “I have no home or parents.” As he eased himself gratefully into the chair he saw, and loved, her quick gesture of compassion. “Oh, you need not pity me too much,” he hastened to add, covering what she guessed to be a wound far more painful and private than any dealt by saddle leather. “I live in my schoolmaster’s house and he must have been very carefully — chosen. He is both wise and kind.”

  “Not that old — ?” Tansy’s head jerked backwards irreverently towards the closed door while she smothered the unflattering description which had sprung to her mind.

  The lad laughed. “No, no, praise God! Master Gervase comes to see me occasionally, and asks how I am getting on with lessons and arranges about payments, I imagine. But I do not know where he lives and he is always very careful to impress upon me that he is no relation of mine, for which,” added his graceless charge, with a wide grin, “I am truly thankful.”

  Tansy listened to him with that careful attention which made people tell her things. She felt all the more sympathetic because he showed no particular self-pity. “But, Dicko
n, it must be terrible to have no relatives at all. No one of your own to love.”

  “I loved the kind woman who brought me up in a cottage when I was small,” he said, reminiscently. “It was there that I first saw Master Gervase. As soon as I was old enough he fetched me to Master Paston’s school. I cried myself to sleep for weeks, but now it is home to me. My class-mates are good fellows. But we shall soon have to part company. Most of them will be apprenticed by their fathers to some freeman or other of one of the City guilds.”

  “And you?” asked Tansy.

  “Master Gervase always thought that I should become an apprentice, too. But now he is not so sure.” The bewildered look returned to blank out all his expressive eagerness. “Why should the King have sent for me?”

  Tansy considered the problem, all housekeeping worries momentarily pushed aside. “Perhaps, Dickon, your father was one of those many gentlemen who gave their lives for him in battle. My father says the King is always doing kindnesses to their families. Even sometimes to their bastards.”

  “That is what Piers suggested.”

  “Piers?”

  “Piers Harrowe. My particular friend at school. And it would, of course, be very nice to think so. But why should King Richard be bothered with me at such an important time?”

  “It might be some promise he made. A man going into battle must want to fulfil his promises.”

  They sat side by side companionably. “It could well be true,” agreed Dickon, absently chalking a succession of attractive arabesques and corbels on the absent landlord’s tally board. “Because some months ago this Gervase took me to a very beautiful house. It had lovely coloured windows and a hammerbeam roof. And after we had waited a long time and all manner of grandly-dressed people and servants had passed back and forth across the hall we were called into a much smaller room where a gentleman spoke to me very kindly. He was dressed in black, I remember. He asked me about my studies and whether I went regularly to archery practice with the elder boys. He seemed particularly pleased because I had once hit the gold at two hundred and twenty yards, and made me construe some Latin out of one of those new printed books. He seemed to be looking me over and testing me, if you know what I mean. And before we left he gave me a gold noble so that I was able to return some of the kindnesses of my friends. Master Gervase told me never to speak of this visit. And I never have, except to you and Piers. And why I should be telling you, whom I have only just met and whose name I do not even know, completely mystifies me!”