The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  “How do you know? Have you seen him?”

  “No! No! I couldn’t. I remembered his kindness — when he spoke to me. But we have heard other people talking. That is where everybody has gone this morning. Where my stepmother has gone. Otherwise I couldn’t have sat here talking to you.” She got up to go, only then realizing how long they had been together, how absorbed she had been. “Your head is really better, Dickon?”

  “It scarcely hurts. Good old Jod renewed the bandage. And, look, I can stand”

  “You could not walk far. And you have lost your horse.”

  “Yes. When those drunken brutes started chasing me. Though it was scarcely a grievous loss,” he added, with an attempt at a grin.

  “Except that you must somehow get to London,” Tansy reminded him, beginning to descend the ladder rather hurriedly, as she remembered that her father might be needing attention and her step-mother returning at any moment.

  Dickon looked down at her sweet, troubled face. Silently, helplessly, he acknowledged that she was more practical than he, that she had hidden him and fed him, and that without the risk she had taken at the Boar Lane gate and her compassionate help, he would be dead. His self-esteem was at a very low ebb.

  But when her chin was almost level with the hayloft floor she smiled up at him enchantingly. “It took plenty of Plantagenet courage to go and ask the Canon, didn’t it, in full view of all that excited, blood-thirsty mob? I am sure King Richard would have been well pleased with you.”

  7

  In the inn parlour Rose Marsh and her friends were all talking excitedly about the view they had had of the late King’s body.

  “Such a crowd there was that my new cloak got torn!” complained Rose.

  “Where was he laid?” asked Tansy, coming into the room with some clean linen for her father.

  “Outside the Guild Hall,” Mistress Gamble, the shoemaker’s wife, told her. “Erected almost beside the stocks, the bier was. And what with the people shoving and the Friars praying and the new King’s men standing guard in case some of us takes a fancy to steal it, ‘twas all we could do to see which was royal bier and which was felons’ stocks.”

  Coming from the stark reality of grief, Tansy felt the woman’s shrill, excited laughter cut through her like an uncaring wind. Although many mourned their King sincerely, to Rose and the friends who had gone along with her, his lying-in-state — if state there had been — seemed to have amounted to little more than a puppet show.

  “They be showin’ him down in Newarke by the Castle tomorrow, and close by here at St. Nicholas church the next day, if so be as you wants to go, my dear,” another woman told her kindly. “But I wouldn’t leave it any later, or the poor corpse’ll begin to stink an’ the good Friars’ll be takin’ him for burial”

  Tansy hurried upstairs away from them all. On the first floor — which had so recently been all grandeur and bustle and which was now so sadly deserted — she put down her burden and opened the door of the great chamber. The chatter of voices no longer pursued her. Here all was quiet. She shut the door and stood leaning against it, thinking of the man who had slept here — the man who slept so ill — and who, incredibly, was Dickon Broome’s father.

  All her life she had been familiar with the room, but now it was as if she saw it for the first time, taking in every feature. As a child she had often played here while her mother and some maid-servant made up the great double bed; her memory held a jumbled succession of wealthy travellers who had professed themselves comfortable here, but now it had housed the privacy of a king and must have formed the background to some of his last thoughts and hours. She looked appreciatively at the wide hearth with its two stone jambs, at the great beams open to the high ceiling ridge and ornamented with scrolls in red, black and yellow, and at the oak mullioned window with its five glass lights projecting over the main entrance in the High Street. King Richard must have formed his first quick impression of all these things that evening when he came in with Lord Lovell and found her standing staring at his newly set-up bed. How right her step-mother had been when she had promised there would be room for it and for the existing four-poster, now pushed to one side, in this fine master room. Tansy’s gaze came back to the King’s bed. She wished that she could show it to Dickon, who had so much more cause to be interested than she. She wished that he could see the whole room, just as King Richard had left it, and all so poignantly ready for his return. There was his splendid scarlet and gold night-gown lying across a carved chest, his soft, fur-lined shoes set by some squire before the empty grate, and on the bedside table even the book he might have been trying to read because he could not sleep.

  Tansy crossed the room to look at it. As she picked it up the tooled leather was smooth as squirrel fur to her touch. She opened it, and found it was in Latin. To her disappointment she could not read a word, except the name of William Caxton in a kind of printed picture. But on the front page of all the owner had written his name in ink. Ricardus Rex. That much Latin, at least, everyone could read. With a sudden sense of her own boldness, she stood staring down intently at the bold, flowing script, until the door was flung open and with a swish of skirts her step-mother came in.

  “So you had the same thought as I did,” she was saying, not unamiably. “It is not a bad bed. We don’t need another bed, but we could sell it.”

  “Sell it?” echoed Tansy.

  “But of course. Seeing it was a king’s bed we could probably get a good deal for it. Sell it, I say, whatever your father thinks! It is the only way to deal with people who don’t pay their debts.”

  Tansy held the open book protectively against her breast. “You can’t pay them when you are dead,” she said, with the moronic lack of expression which Rose’s overbearing personality invariably produced in her. It seemed so unbelievable that anyone could come into this room and feel nothing of the recent presence or the subsequent tragedy of its last occupant. But Rose was bustling round, pouncing upon a brush here and a pair of hose there, scrutinizing and valuing them, until finally she swooped on the gold and scarlet gown. “Real Damascene. Nothing like this has ever been seen in this town before, I’ll warrant. I will have that man from London cut it into a gown for me. It will be the talk of the town if I wear it for the Christmas revels.”

  She threw the gorgeous thing about her shoulders and executed a dance step or two. “Does it not become me?” she demanded.

  “Well enough. But it is too bright a colour for your hair.”

  “Meaning that it would better liven up your straw-colour curls?” she teased, flicking an end of the priceless material across Tansy’s face as she whirled past.

  “Meaning that I would not dare to cut up a garment of the King’s,” retorted Tansy, stung to anger.

  “But it does not belong to him any more. No one came back to claim it. And, anyway, he is dead. And now — whether we like it or not — we have King Henry the Seventh.” Rose, with the silk still draped about her ample breast and hips, stood with arms akimbo, and launched into exasperated explanations. “Do you not understand, foolish ninny, that everything in this room — everything left in any of our rooms — is ours? I went to the Mayor and made sure about that. A mint of money it cost to entertain them that night, I told him. Twenty men and horses to feed, to say nothing of all the scriveners and servants. And having to bribe to get food at all, with the town so full. And the way I worked — the way we all worked., she had the grace to add. “When I’d talked myself to a standstill and paid him a few compliments about the way he had managed things when a different king came back, he readily agreed that we’d a right to keep everything. But I made him say it in front of some of the aldermen so that there should be no going back on it afterwards. Although really I suppose the only thing of any value is the bed.”

  “There is this book,” said Tansy reluctantly.

  “A book. And all in Latin, I’ll be bound,” said Rose, glancing at it without enthusiasm.

  Tansy held
it out for her inspection, but made no effort to show the royal inscription. If Rose Marsh imagined the silk gown of more value than a book, so much the worse for her. Neither she herself nor her father could read it. But she had immediately thought of one person who would know both how to value and how to read the beautifully-bound thing. “You can keep it if you’ve a mind, as far as I am concerned,” said Rose carelessly. “And these shoes look as if they might fit your father. Just the thing for an invalid, and he will probably cherish them as if they were the Crown Jewels.”

  She picked them up and departed, and Tansy stood clasping her book. If she could not bring Dickon in to see this room and the fine carvings on the bed, she could at least give him one of his father’s cherished possessions. Before leaving the bedside she turned for a closer look at the curious carvings which she had so much admired, and as she stepped back she noticed something shining among the rushes where her foot had disturbed the folds of the valance. Uncovering it with the toe of her shoe, she saw to her amazement that it was a gold coin. She bent to pick it up and saw another. Putting down the book she went on her knees to thrust her hand under the edge of the bed, and discovered some more. Five gold coins which, in their haste, the King or one of his gentlemen must have dropped. Tansy turned each one over carefully. There could be no mistake about it. Three rose nobles with King Edward’s picture engraved on one side and his Yorkist roses on the other, and two half angels with Saint George and the dragon. She gazed at them as they lay in a row along her outstretched palm, considering the fine things they would buy. She, too, would like a new gown for Christmas. And a fur-lined hood like the Mayor’s daughter wore, and a gay new harness for Pippin. And, as her step-mother had said, everything the royal party left behind belonged to the White Boar now. But, of course, she must hand the coins over to her father. They represented more than his normal takings for a month and would help to repay his expenditure for the royal party’s visit. Never once did it occur to her to show them to her step-mother, and when she heard her calling angrily from the foot of the stairs she slipped them into her pocket, hid her book in a linen chest, and ran down.

  There were some rough characters in the tavern and more were shouting and quarrelling outside. Most of them had already drunk too much, and one truculent young fellow was sporting a large red rose and shouting above the din, “We saw him come in here, the lousy Yorkist!”

  “What is this about your letting a man in at the side gates yesterday?” asked Rose, turning sharply on Tansy the moment she appeared.

  “We saw him slip in,” corroborated another aggrieved youth.

  “They are trying to make out we are hiding someone from the battlefield,” explained Dilly.

  “They were drunk and throwing stones at our house yesterday evening. Far too drunk to know what they saw. Jod and I bolted the gates to keep them out of our yard,” parried Tansy, badly frightened and playing for time.

  “And we’ll get him out if we have to tear your White Boar down. And tan him for a spoil-sport — sneaking on us to the priest!” they yelled.

  “I know nothing about any priest, but you’ll get out of here or I’ll call my husband to put you out,” bluffed Rose, who certainly did not lack courage.

  Tom Hood, who could not abide her and who had kept out of the row until Tansy appeared, rose reluctantly from his stool. “Come along now,” he urged, propelling the drunkest of them towards the door. “Any Yorkist who’d run in here for safety would be well on his way out of Leicester by now, if he’s got any sense. Best get yourself another drink at the Crown, up the road. They’ve got singing girls up there.”

  “Your stable boy says there’s some stranger in your hayloft. Swears he heard whispering,” persisted one of them, trying to turn back at the open door.

  “And would it be the first time you’ve heard a man and girl whispering in a hayloft?” jeered handsome Rose Marsh, taking the centre of the floor. “Maybe they think hay’s only for horses in whatever parts you rowdy lot come from, but young folk have other notions here.”

  A general guffaw went round, and between Tom’s persuasion and her ridicule their unwelcome visitors took themselves off. But Tansy was left standing in her own home with a nasty slur on her name. For Dickon’s sake she had not dared to open her mouth in self-defence. All their regular customers knew that there was no love lost between her step-mother and herself, but they had always looked at her with respect. Now she noticed how they either looked with a warmer, more speculative kind of liking, or avoided looking at her at all. Unfortunately for her Master Jordan, who would have known how to deal with the situation, was not there. Indignant anger for herself and fear for Dickon fought in her for mastery.

  “Didn’t I say you were always cuddling in the hayloft when you ought to have been helping, you slut? Taking advantage of your father’s sickness. And to-night again we shall have these hooligans stoning the paint off the place because they think we’re ardent Yorkists!”

  Rose Marsh said it loudly in order to deny the imputation to any strangers who might be present, and who were unaware of her husband’s sympathies. It was safer for trade to appear neutral these days, and money mattered more to her than did the reputation of her husband’s daughter.

  With white face and chin held high, Tansy walked out into the yard and across to Pippin’s stable. And it was there that Tom Hood found her, as soon as he could slip out without seeming to follow her. As he came through the doorway his good-humoured face was unusually angry. “What was this about the fellow in the hayloft?” he asked.

  With all her heart Tansy wished that she could tell him, but the whole thing would sound so fantastic — “a likely story”, as her father had said. And she had acted impulsively against his word. Caressing Pippin’s soft neck, she wished that humans could be as comfortably dumb and uninquisitive as beasts.

  “I will clip Diggory’s ears for you. But was there really anybody there?” insisted Tom.

  “Yes.”

  For a moment he was too hurt to speak, leaning against the manger. Then he laughed with curt bitterness, “Too slow, wasn’t I? If I’d supposed that you wanted that sort of thing — ”

  “There wasn’t any of that sort of thing — ”

  “I was fool enough to think you were the kind of girl a fellow waits for, in marriage. But it seems you’re like all the others.”

  Tansy turned on him furiously. “I don’t know what other sorts of girl you’ve known, Tom Hood! But this man in the loft is no lover of mine. And, if it interests you, he is still there.”

  “Is he old or impotent or something, then?” asked Tom after a moment’s silence, half persuaded by her vehemence.

  “No. Younger than either of us. Not younger than I in actual years perhaps, but less experienced. The way people are who don’t have to do with earning money. And he was pretty badly hurt.”

  “One of these new light flight arrows?” hazarded Tom, with professional interest, taking it for granted that the fugitive she had befriended was a wounded soldier.

  “I had to bandage his head and his foot,” Tansy told him non-committally. “He wants to get back to London, but he has lost his horse.”

  “As far as I am concerned he can’t get back there soon enough. But I am sorry I spoke to you like that just now, Tansy. And furious that Mistress Marsh should have talked the way she did in front of all of us. If only you had told your father — ”

  “How could I worry him when he is already a sick man and the business so badly hit?” asked Tansy, who knew that she would have had his disapproval. “But I must get this poor lad away somehow.”

  “You certainly must now. Before your step-mother finds him, or these battle-happy gangs do any more damage. By what I know of Mistress Marsh, she’d probably be more concerned if you were harbouring an unpopular Yorkist than a lover.” He came and joined her in offering tit-bits to Pippin. “You’ve been a soft-hearted fool as usual, haven’t you, my sweet? But if it’s only a matter of a horse — ”r />
  Tansy turned and caught at his arm. “Oh, Tom, you mean you could get him one?”

  “My dear girl, ever since Bosworth the roads around this city have been full of roaming, riderless horses. Only this morning one came ambling into the forge in Cank Street when I was there. A good enough beast, but plastered with mud. Old Matt the farrier tied him up, and I dare say he’d be only too pleased to sell him for a noble or two.”

  “And you will buy him for me?”

  “Should I see my money back?”

  “Yes, yes, he can pay,” promised Tansy recklessly. “And I will send Jod to fetch it soon after dusk.”

  “So he is in this, too? I might have known. The besotted old watch dog would pull down the church bells if you told him to. All right, Tansy, I will see what I can do — for a kiss.” He pulled her to him and she lifted her face to his, rapturous with gratitude, but it was not gratitude he wanted. “Not such a half-hearted peck as that, or I shall still believe you have been squandering them in the hayloft.”

  He showed her the kind of kisses he meant, and took his time over it, while Tansy stayed breathless and quiescent in his arms. It was good to be cared for — to let down her defences and be warmed by the exciting thrill of his love-making. And Tom was no novice. “You are my dearest friend,” she murmured.

  He had to laugh and let her go in exasperation. “Not quite the relationship I was aiming at!” he said, admitting defeat. Lifting her chin with a gentler finger, he looked quizzically into her trusting blue eyes. “I wonder will you ever learn to love me, Tansy?”

  “I do love you, Tom,” she assured him. But he knew that for all his efforts at instruction it was not the awakened love of a woman. And the gay, go-ahead fletcher of Leicester was not accustomed to failure.

  “Yes, I know you do,” he agreed, with a sigh. “Like you love Jod, or old Will Jordan or this precious pony of yours.”

  8