So that was why she hadn’t heard. Tansy looked at the neat script bearing her name, and knew that, after all, Dickon hadn’t forgotten her. The Spring sunshine was suddenly brighter, her heart lighter. She thanked the chapman effusively, promised him all manner of extravagant purchases from her step-mother and cantered home with half the week’s provisions forgotten. Not until she had shut herself into the privacy of her own bedroom could she bring herself, breathlessly, to open her package.
To her mingled dismay and happiness four gold coins rolled out. She was dismayed that he should have repaid the amount which she had so willingly given him, yet happy that he was the sort of person who would do so. Never once had she expected it, never once waited it; but a warm security wrapped her about like an ermine cloak because she found him to be utterly dependable, and because she could now base her feelings for him on the fact that all he had said had been sincere and durable and not just the emotional expression of gratitude. It made sense of her strange reluctance to accept marriage from anyone whom she liked even as much as she liked Tom Hood.
With eager, trembling fingers she unrolled the letter — the first she had ever received.
“My sweet Tansy,” wrote Dickon. ‘Weeks ago I sought out your chapman, but he has been too busy selling silks for the Coronation to the ladies of the new Court to find time for his provincial round through the Midlands. Which is no doubt as well because only now am I able to repay the money which your lovely generosity persuaded me to accept. Without it I could never have been so well set on the path to a usefully creative life. The road to London was not too badly beset by thieving stragglers from the battle, and I received from Master Paston a most kind welcome, he being overcome by the King’s tragic fate and eager to hear all the last news of him, and indignant at Master Gervase’s dishonest desertion.
“Good Master Paston disclosed to me that he still had in hand some money on my behalf, and with this and part of that which you lent me he has managed without too much difficulty to arrange for my indentures to a master mason named Hurland Dale, living in Old Jewry. For a year now I have been one of his apprentices, living in a part of his house reserved for us. The work is such as I have always craved to learn, the rules of our Guild insure our fair treatment, and although we work hard my fellow apprentices make much sport on their holidays. For myself, much as I enjoy this, I would fill a part of my life with more serious occupations and so have been reading both the invaluable book which you gave me, and some which my master has lent me.
“Having done fairly the tasks set me, I have been chosen to assist Master Dale’s head mason in the building of a town house for Sir Walter Moyle, a Kentish gentleman and judge of the King’s Bench. This Sir Walter, seeing some quaint toy beasts which I have carved and coloured in my spare time, was pleased to buy them for his grandchildren, which is how I have been fortunate enough to earn money. And by the same token, and remembering a kindness concerning a horse which I later sold in order to buy suitable clothing, I would have you mention to Master Tom Hood that, should the arrow-making craft become less necessary in the Midlands, this same Sir Walter Moyle is in need of a good fletcher, he being charged with raising Kentish men for the defence of Calais, and his own fletcher having but recently died.
“This letter is all about me, dear Tansy, but my thoughts are all of you. I would that I were a chapman bound for Leicester or — better still — that I might have you here to show you the sights of London. I envy even that foolish painted creature the Blue Boar who is ever near you. Your friend, who would be more, Richard Broome.”
Tansy read her first letter through again, and then sat still on her bed with a happy smile on her face. Her mind reached far beyond the sloping walls of her clean, sun-lit attic. In imagination she was walking with Dickon in London, being shown all the sights. The houses perched on the bridge, the crowded masts of foreign shipping in the river, the grim Tower, the open space at Smithfield where the ’prentices held their sports, the gracious palace and grand Abbey away down the Strand at Westminster. All the places she had heard travellers talking about. The fact that he wanted her to be there made it all real. And was his message to Tom pure altruism, or a lover’s precaution, preferring to have him out of Leicester during his own absence? Tansy laughed aloud at the thought and carefully locked the King’s money in the small box in which, since childhood, she had kept her treasures. At the back of her mind was the notion that one day those gold coins might help her to get to London, which was now, since her father’s death, beginning to be the city of her dreams. Even dead, how much King Richard was still helping them, she thought, for the first time coupling herself and Dickon as a united pair. In fact, it was the King who had given her Dickon himself. And then a frightened diffidence gripped her, for how could she, Tansy Marsh, consider even in the privacy of a young girl’s dreams the possibility of marrying a King’s son?
She did not have long to worry about it. Stridently, intrusively, a voice cut across her interesting dilemma “Tansy! Tan-see! Aren’t you coming down to help?” called her step-mother, from the bottom of the attic stairs.
The sloping white-washed walls became part of an inn again. The pretty comb with which she tidied her fair curls was, rather accusingly, a fairing which Tom had given her. Downstairs the lamplit tavern room with its broad local speech and laughter and its human warmth was part of her real, familiar life. A friendly place, lacking only the loving welcome of her father. But Master Jordan and Tom were there, and there were things she wanted to say to them both.
“Where have you been?” asked Tom, drawing in his long sprawling legs to let her pass.
“In London,” she whispered mysteriously. “I have a message for you presently.”
“Someone left you a fortune?” enquired Rose, noticing with grudging admiration a new radiance on the girl’s quiet face as she deftly picked up a tray of tankards.
“A fortune and a handsome husband,” said Tansy, and everyone laughed good-naturedly. And after serving for a while and spreading something of her new happiness among the Blue Boar benches, she went back to speak to Tom.
“You remember the man you got the horse for? I had a letter from him — ”
“So that is why you still have star dust in your eyes,” he deduced glumly.
“He reached London safely and is apprenticed to a mason in Old Jewry. He was so grateful for your help about the horse that he sends you a message.”
“A message to me? But he didn’t even know my name.”
“Oh, yes, he did. I often spoke of you.”
Tom perked up considerably. “You did, Tansy?”
“And he was just as absurdly jealous of you as you are of him,” she teased with new flirtatious confidence born of the assurance of a lasting love. “He called you — quite enviously — ‘that up-and-coming young man’. You see, he has less experience — less confidence. But, on the other hand, is very deliberately thoughtful. And it occurred to him that since all the fighting seems to have ceased and prospects in the building trade are very good, perhaps your arrow business may be very bad.”
“Very kind of him, I’m sure!” raged Tom, hit on the raw again.
He sprang to his feet and reached for his cloak, but Tansy calmly produced the letter from the bodice of her gown. “He himself, being apprenticed quite unadventurously to a mason, is helping to build a house for a justice of the King’s Bench called Sir Walter Moyle — ”
“I have heard of him,” muttered Tom, half in and half out of his cloak.
“‘And this Sir Walter Moyle is being charged with raising Kentish men for the defence of Calais,’“ went on Tansy imperturbably, reading from her letter. She was aware that the cloak had fallen at her feet and that Tom’s attention was well and truly caught — that he had turned and was staring down at her.
“‘And I would have you tell Master Tom Hood — he who was so kind about the horse, which I later sold for suitable clothing — ’”
“Yes, yes. Go on. N
ever mind about the horse. Give me the letter.”
He reached for it, but Tansy deftly held it out of his reach. “‘ — that Sir Walter Moyle is in sore need of a good fletcher’,” she concluded calmly.
But Tom was anything but calm. “But surely a man in Sir Walter’s position, who is always raising bowmen — whose name is a byword in the trade — has a fletcher?”
“The poor man has just died,” related Tansy, in tones of suitable regret. “He was probably quite old and experienced. That is why, as you seem to have gathered, the Moyle family would need a good fletcher.”
“Died, has he, poor devil!” Tom said perfunctorily. But she looked up then and, seeing the twinkle that belied the solemnity of her voice, he hugged her excitedly. “Tansy, do you suppose that if I packed up now and rode hell for leather to London–”
“I don’t suppose. I know,” said Tansy, and hugged him back. “Haven’t I always said that you could talk anybody into anything? You’ll be making arrows for this personal bodyguard the new King is forming before you know where you are.”
“It’s a chance. Where is this fellow’s address? I ought to thank him,” said Tom, all animosity forgotten. Indeed, everything forgotten in the chance to get on, thought Tansy, a trifle hurt …
“He works for a Master Hurland Dale of Old Jewry.” She turned and raised her voice. “Master Jordan! Step-mother! It is Tom who is going to make a fortune. He is going to London,” she announced.
“We can only hope — about the fortune,” said Tom, with a rare access of modesty.
They all wished him good luck, and since he had always been the first to help others their wishes were sincere.
“But what about your business here?” William Jordan reminded him. To him they both seemed very young and optimistic, but then, with a new dynasty upon the throne, perhaps it was a brave young world.
“I will go and see my head man, Brewster. He is quite capable of dealing with the regular orders that come in. And after all, I may be back in a few days.”
“I half hope you are,” admitted Tansy, clinging to him.
He kissed her before them all, though it might well have been a kiss of gratitude. “If you could spare Tansy to help me pack, Mistress Marsh?” he asked audaciously. “I want to get away within the hour.”
But the landlady of the Blue Boar knew her world. “While wishing you a prosperous and speedy journey, Tom,” she said, with an acumen which drew laughter, “I rather think you will get away considerably quicker if you pack by yourself.”
And some hours later, Tansy, lying wakeful and excited in bed, heard the hoof-beats of the fletcher’s horse as he cantered along High Street towards the Cross and South gate. He whistled a stave of a love song as he went past, and she ran to the window and waved. Long after the town was quiet her thoughts and prayers followed him through the hazards of night on the road towards London. But her heart was there already. In a dormitory full of tousle-headed, sleeping ’prentices, one of whom was a king’s son.
11
Life seemed lonely indeed.to Tansy without her father, Dickon or Tom. She would have liked to send Dickon some answer to his letter, but Tom had seized his opportunity so quickly that there had been no time. Dickon would have news of her, of course, if the two of them met, and he would know that Gufford had given her the letter, and hear the sad news of her father’s death. But that was not the same thing as a personal written response which she was sure the chapman would take back for her. Dickon would look for one. He would be disappointed if his words of steady affection drew no response from her. But Tansy had to admit, to her shame, that it would indeed be a labour of love. Her days had been filled with domestic affairs, and since her mother’s death she had forgotten any book-learning which she had ever had. Save in her missal she seldom read anything, and she knew that her spelling was atrocious. Good, enough, perhaps, to leave an urgent note for the apothecary or the wine merchant, but shame-making when writing to a man who knew all about Master Caxton’s books.
Tansy pondered the problem while going about her morning occupations, and decided to enlist the schoolmaster’s help. As soon as she had heard the children come running and shouting from his door after lessons, she said firmly that she was going out for a while, and asked Rose if she would show the King’s Bed to anyone who might come to see it.
Grudgingly Rose agreed, remarking that she had been going to take a rest and that, in any case, she knew none of the romantic nonsense which Tansy told her gullible clients. But for once Tansy paid no attention and slipped across the street to the schoolhouse.
Beyond the bare and empty schoolroom, with its desk and forms and hornbooks and the birch rod which she imagined kind Will Jordan was more inclined to spare than to use, she found him in his own little book-strewn room. “I am glad that you have come to see me here, Tansy,” he said, drawing up a stool for her. “It is perhaps easier for us to talk freely than at the inn. Is there something you want to tell me?”
“It is only that I want you to help me with a letter. To write the address clearly and show me how to seal it. It is to go to London.”
“So soon?” he said smiling, and she realized that he took it for granted that her letter was for Tom, and that somehow she would have to explain. Embarrassed and blushing she drew Dickon’s letter from her gown and laid it on his table, pointing to the address. “Well, that should be easy,” he said, looking down at the excellent penmanship. “But what is the name?”
“Master Richard Broome, apprentice. I have not seen him since the week of Bosworth. It is he who sent a message to Tom about Sir Walter Moyle needing a fletcher.”
“I see. And you want to thank him,” said Jordan, relief chasing anxiety from his sensitive face.
But his kindness and her own innate honesty forbade the easy subterfuge. She knew that Will Jordan was utterly trustworthy, and remembered how her father had told her to go to him in any difficulty. And so she told him the whole story, swearing him to secrecy on Dickon’s behalf. And to her pleased surprise he listened to it all with grave attention, asking a pertinent question now and again, and not scoffing at it as her father had done. “I can well imagine his calling it a likely story. It certainly sounds like one. But it is by no means impossible,” he said, turning over the letter in his hand to admire the fineness of the script. “All the more so because no one seems to be trying to make anything out of it.”
“He even returned the money,” Tansy reminded him.
“And now, very sensibly, is trying to live down all pretensions, false or genuine, by following a useful craft among the busy population of London.”
“That is what the King himself advised for his safety,” said Tansy. “You see, Dickon is dangerously like him.”
Jordan looked at her sharply, appraisingly. He knew her to be full of common sense, without high-flown fancies. Her last remark convinced him more than anything. And although he was concerned for her, and not unmindful of poor Tom, he recognized how apt it was that she should seem to care for a lad whose father had meant so much to her own.
He set paper and ink before her and left her to compose her first letter as privately as possible, only helping her when she asked, and finally addressing it for her. “I suggest that we do not seal it now, in case you should want to add anything before the chapman goes,” he said, looking down at her diligently bent golden head with tender amusement. What he really meant was that he would leave her opportunity to add some spontaneous, ill-spelt love message which he was sure any lively ‘prentice, whether king’s son or not, would appreciate far more than all his own correctly-phrased thanks or items of news.
Warm with gratitude, Tansy reached up to kiss his cheek, and left the schoolhouse far more happily than she had come. She knew now that a friend was close at hand to take her father’s place, and possibly one who was wiser than her father. But time had passed so quickly while she was with him that she had stayed longer than she intended, and she re-entered the inn with misgivi
ng. Rose would have missed her afternoon nap, people might have come to be shown the King’s bedroom, and she would probably be in a vile temper. But to Tansy’s surprise she found her stepmother still up in the best bedroom examining with apparent interest a belt which the King had left behind, and singing, of all things, Hugh Malpas’s ballad about the rival inns. Just as if its ribald triumphing had no power at all to hurt her.
“Did anyone come?” asked Tansy apprehensively, peering in at the door.
“Yes. Two parties of people. Quite pleasant folk, they were.” Tansy came right into the room, staring at her unpredictable step-mother in surprise. The setting sun shone through the wide mullioned window making a russet aureole of her hair, all signs of disagreeableness and fatigue were gone and — apart from the fact that she was rather too plump — Rose Marsh looked a comely and pleasant enough woman to attract any man’s attention. “Were they interested?” asked Tansy, at a loss to account for such a welcome transformation.
“Not particularly. Which was just as well, as they paid as much but didn’t stay long.”
“Then why in the world are you staying up here instead of resting or gossiping with Druscilla Gamble in the parlour?” wondered Tansy. But it was too good an opportunity to be missed. Now, in such a moment of good temper, was the opportunity to confess about her light-hearted promises to the chapman.
“I should have told you yesterday, but so much was happening with Tom going off like that. I saw Gufford the chapman in Lutterworth. He’ll be here in the market-place on Saturday. He had some lovely things. Rose-patterned damask for gowns and some cosy hoods lined with miniver. Silver chatelaines with filigree work and some amusing shoes fashioned like animals. I told him I was sure you would want to see everything.” Rose laid down the leather belt, all interest diverted to feminine fashions. “Had he anything suitable for a medium-weight cloak for Easter?” she asked eagerly.
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