The King's Bed

by Campbell Barnes, Margaret

  “Yes. Something I thought was lovely. A roll of Venetian velvet in this new shade of Tudor green. All the ladies were wearing it in London at Coronation time, he said, and this was the one length he had over. It was terribly expensive. Almost half an angel a yard.” Tansy almost stammered with nervousness, remembering how shamelessly she had tried to curry favour with the useful, letter-carrying chapman, from London. “But I said I thought you would like him to save it for you.”

  “Indeed, indeed, I should!” cried Rose, to Tansy’s vast relief. “I only hope you were quite definite, so that he isn’t persuaded to sell it to some other eager customer first. I should go green myself with envy if I saw the Mayor’s wife flouncing about in it!”

  “It is certainly just the right colour for your hair,” said Tansy, laughing and half envious too. “I will get up early on Saturday morning as soon as the stalls are set up and make sure of it for you,” she added, wondering where the money was to come from.

  But that did not seem to be bothering Rose at all. “That is good of you, Tansy,” she said, “and I will come later and make my purchases, and then be here all tomorrow afternoon again in case anyone should come to see the King’s Bed. It is rather magnificent with all those fleurs-de-lys, isn’t it?” She went singing and humming to the window to look down into the street. “You know, since you and Dilly and Jod managed to push it more into the middle I like this room much better. It gets all the sun. I think I shall move in here myself to sleep. My room looking over the yard is very dull.”

  “Then I expect you would like Dilly and me to bring your things and make up the other bed,” offered Tansy, seeing that it was a sensible idea but not at all pleased at the prospect. Somehow the constant presence of her step-mother, who had never shown the least sympathy for the late King, seemed an intrusion.

  Before the sun was well up next day, she had handed Gufford her letter to Dickon and secured the cloak length. But the Tudor green velvet was not the only thing which Rose was tempted to buy from Gufford. Later in the morning she came back from the market-place followed by a pack-horse laden with all manner of extravagant adornments and fripperies. She felt that she had every excuse. She was still a good-looking woman, the months of widow’s mourning were past, and it would soon be springtime. She gave away some of the cheaper ribbons and geegaws with a lavish hand, and completely refurbished her own wardrobe.

  Tansy tried to admire the purchases with good grace, but could not prevent herself from seeing in them the whole winter’s profits for which she had worked so hard. When Jod had bolted the doors behind the last customers and her step-mother was upstairs peacocking before a mirror, she slipped away to the little office where her father had kept his accounts and for the first time gave her serious attention to the figuring. Since his death her step-mother had kept them in a flourishing and erratic hand but, as with most things in which she had an interest — and money always interested her — she contrived to do so with a certain amount of efficiency. To Tansy’s untrained mind the figuring was difficult to understand, but it seemed clear enough that there had been no unusual spate of success on the credit side. Nothing to warrant the spending of so much on luxuries. While big money flowed into the Golden Crown, it was evident that the Blue Boar, even with the popular attraction of the King’s Bed, contrived to make a steady, respectable living and no more. She put away the books and was going to bed, wondering whether she dare remonstrate with her step-mother or not, when she noticed there was a light in the kitchen and heard someone impatiently opening and shutting cupboard doors. She went in, to find Rose, half-undressed, impatiently searching for something. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

  Rose started and turned, ill-pleased and flurried. “I thought you had gone to bed ages ago,” she complained. “But, since you are here, where in God’s name is the chisel?”

  “The chisel,” repeated Tansy, wondering what anyone should want with such an implement at that time of night.

  “Yes, the chisel,” snapped Rose, without vouchsafing any further enlightenment. “It ought to be in this drawer with the meat chopper and basting-spoons, but some interfering hussy must have moved it.”

  At least Tansy could help her there. “Don’t you remember Jod fetched it when he took down the signboard?” she said. “Probably it is in the waggon-shed. I will go and see.”

  She went out under the stars across the still and empty yard, and found it on the bench where Jod mended harness, and took it back to Rose. Her mind was so full of memories of other visits to the waggon-shed and hayloft that she scarcely resented the scant thanks she received or the harsh railing against “that forgetful fool” Jod. But she did notice the almost greedily eager way in which Rose snatched at the tool and hurried upstairs with it to her new bedroom, and how annoyed she seemed because she had not been able to find the thing for herself. But as more and more of the running of the inn fell upon Tansy’s shoulders, she soon forgot about the incident.

  Rose seemed to be always upstairs, or buying and trying on new clothes, or out pleasuring about the town. “She probably means to get married again,” said Druscilla Gamble, watching her hustle out of the inn one morning in her becoming green cloak in company with one of the aldermen’s wives.

  Tansy turned to stare at the shoemaker’s wife, letting the new and rather frightening idea sink in.

  “And I shouldn’t be surprised if she lands Hugh Malpas this time,” added Druscilla, spitefully jealous of both cloak and exalted company.

  “Oh, Mistress Gamble!” exclaimed Tansy. “You don’t really think that?”

  “Why not? Did you want him for yourself?”

  “God forbid! But with the two of them — what should I do?”

  “What indeed, you poor child!” agreed Druscilla Gamble, who was not completely heartless.

  And only the next day when the inn door had slammed angrily behind its owner and Tansy was hurriedly making some honey cakes for a family of children who were staying, Dilly came to her in the kitchen in floods of tears.

  “Why, Dilly, what’s the matter?”

  “She been beating you again?” asked cook, looking up from her pastry.

  Tansy took the trembling girl into her arms and cook yanked the tom, shabby dress from her thin shoulders and smeared some soothing lard on the angry red weals.

  “But what did you do, Dilly?” asked Tansy, knowing full well how irritatingly stupid the maid could be, and how much patient encouragement she needed.

  “’Tis the clothes. I be no good with ’em. Allus now she wants me to stand by and help her dress. Brush her hair, and pull in her corsets. Says she’s training me to be a proper maid, like Mistress Wigston has. But I’m no good. I spill the rose water and spoil her freshly-ironed laces with my hot hands, and then she gets mad at me and says I’m an imbecile lit only for Bedlam, and beats me. What is Bedlam, Mistress Tansy?”

  “Oh, a kind of hospital. But you are quite useful really, Dilly.”

  “I’d do anything for you and cook. But I don’t know anything except about washing platters an’ feedin’ hens an’ handing ale. An’ there’s some customers beginnin’ to come in now, and me with my eyes all red an’ my dress all down.”

  “You sit there by the fire and I will go and serve them,” said Tansy, hastily pushing her cakes into the oven and asking cook to see to them. But before she had reached the door Dilly said something which pulled her up sharply.

  “She be gone out to buy a cupboard.”

  “Who is buying a cupboard?” asked Tansy.

  “Why, the Mistress, o’ course.”

  “What sort of a cupboard?”

  “One o’ they wardrobe things. To put all the dresses in. An ar-moy or somethin’, she kept callin’ it. It’s to stand against the wall in the King’s bedroom, where she sleeps now.”

  Tansy came slowly back towards the fire. “Are you quite sure about this, Dilly? How do you know?”

  “I heard her talkin’ to the carpenter. Had him
up there to measure. Real fussy she was about it. Had to have a drawer here an’ hooks there.” And, the pain having worn off, the girl began to giggle.

  When Rose Marsh returned she was escorted by Hugh Malpas, which gave colour to Mistress Gamble’s surmise. He stayed for a drink, asked questions about Rose’s latest purchase and it seemed to Tansy that he looked round the place with a new proprietary interest. Partly because she could not abide his presence, and partly because she was so worried, Tansy slipped across the street to the schoolhouse and unburdened herself to Will Jordan.

  “She always was extravagant, as you know. But my father wouldn’t let her exceed the profits.”

  “The whole town is certainly talking about her, and wondering where she gets so much money from,” he admitted, seeing no kindness in pretence.

  “They must know it isn’t from the Boar,” said Tansy. “And at the end of the month the vintner’s bill will be coming in, and if she is really having this armoire made we shan’t be able to pay it.”

  “But has it occurred to you that Malpas could? If she expects to marry him it would perhaps account for her extravagance. That may be the solution.”

  “Yes, it may be the solution. But either way,” said Tansy slowly, “it would mean my home gone. If we get into debt I shall have no home, and if he marries her I could not live with them. I would rather hire myself out to work.”

  “No, you could not live with them,” agreed Jordan. “But you will marry, Tansy.”

  “Men cannot take wives while they are still apprentices,” she said, the colour burning up into her cheeks.

  “No. But up-and-coming fletchers can,” Will Jordan reminded her, knowing what her father would have wanted.

  12

  When Tom’s man, Brewster, came with the news that his young master had been engaged by Sir Walter Moyle and had been given temporary accommodation in the London house which Master Hurland Dale was building, and that the supply of arrows for Calais looked like being one of the best paid assignments in the trade, Tansy saw the wisdom of Will Jordan’s remark. With life at the Blue Boar becoming more and more difficult, and the future more uncertain, she was at times sorely tempted to let Tom know that she had changed her mind. Married to him, her future would be secure and, even if he were occasionally lured into gay affairs with other girls, he would always be kind to her. She had known him long enough to be sure that all his attractive good points far outweighed his shortcomings. She would go to London, perhaps later on she would even cross the sea with him to Calais, and life with Tom, wherever he was, would certainly never be dull. And if it seemed like taking him in panic as a refuge from her troubles, she reminded herself that she would probably have married him anyhow, if Dickon had not come along. And what were two or three days of intense shared interest — a few hours of intimate talk — to pit against an easy companionship which went back to childhood?

  But something had happened during those few hours with Dickon which gave a new set of values to her world. So she sent no message back by Brewster save sincere congratulations. And Brewster, almost as an afterthought, set her mind at rest as to how Tom and Dickon had liked each other when they had met. “My master sent word to you that he can never be sufficiently grateful to Master Broome who told him of this chance. He went straight to this young man’s lodgings, and now sees him every day at Sir Walter Moyle’s house. I do not know who this Master Broome may be, Mistress Tansy, but it seems they have visited several archery contests together and had good sport.”

  “I expect Tom was delighted to pay all the expenses of their outing,” thought Tansy, knowing how little pocket money most apprentices had. But she was glad that she had said no more to encourage him, nor let herself panic into buying security. For somehow the vintner’s bill was miraculously paid, and as the week’s went by her step-mother showed less and less inclination to marry Malpas. Or, indeed, to marry anybody at all. She seemed very well content as she was, spending money as and when she fancied and leading feminine fashion in Leicester. The only fly in the ointment was that in this orgy of self-indulgence she ate prodigiously of everything she fancied, and grew too fat to become her expensive clothes.

  With the coming of spring Tansy tried to put all worries behind her. She rode on Pippin through the fresh green lanes and, whenever possible, exchanged letters with Dickon. But a completely unexpected difficulty lay ahead. Coming back from Bosworth one day she was surprised to find Gladys, the singing girl, sitting sewing in the parlour.

  “Whatever are you doing with Mistress Marsh’s best headdresses?” she demanded.

  “Altering them,” said Gladys coolly. “She asked me to.”

  Tansy suddenly experienced again that frightening feeling of insecurity. “I should not have thought that plying a needle was exactly your trade,” she said.

  The girl glanced at her calculatingly from beneath her long, dark lashes. If she had intended an impudent riposte, she bit it back. Tansy of the Boar had grown to womanhood, and there was a steadfastness about her which commanded respect. It would be as well, thought Gladys of the Crown, not to run foul of her from the start, “I am no needlewoman, but I have some flair for clothes, even if it is rather — dramatic. And I am hoping that Mistress Marsh will engage me as her maid,” she said, making a show of laying all her cards on the table. “You see, Master Malpas has dismissed me from the Golden Crown.”

  “Dismissed you!” echoed Tansy, almost incredulously. “But you attracted so much custom.”

  “I might sing here, Mistress Marsh thought, as well as doing” — the showman’s daughter waved a contemptuous hand across her present occupation — “this sort of thing.”

  “I see.”

  “Not quite the same type of songs, of course,” Gladys hastened to add, seeing the distaste on Tansy’s face. Her own had been carefully cleansed of paint, and her mien was almost meek, but Tansy still distrusted her. She laid down her riding cloak and gloves and went towards the stairs to find her step-mother, an intention which the girl was quick to suspect. Gladys swept aside all the finery and thread and sprang up, following her urgently. “You will not try to dissuade her from engaging me?” she implored. “My father has said that he will not keep me.”

  “I dare say there are plenty of other men who will,” flung back Tansy, without stopping. “You need scarcely fear to starve.” But, true as that might be, the Welsh girl’s urgent desire to stay seemed real enough.

  Tansy, her temper up, was no longer the biddable young daughter of the house. She flung wide the door of the best bedroom without ceremony. “Is it true that you are having Malpas’s girl here?” she asked.

  Rose swung round on her, a pot of Gladys’s mascara with which she was experimenting still in her hands. “Yes. And why not?”

  “Because the sly slut is not fit to live in my father’s house.”

  “Don’t be sanctimonious, Tansy. In any case, your father is dead and we must do the best we can for ourselves. Dilly is a hopeless fool, and Gladys is clever about clothes.”

  “And about plenty of other things besides.”

  “Oh, come, Tansy! Give the girl a chance. At the Crown she always had to do what Hugh Malpas ordered. Now, it seems, he has turned her out.”

  “I always supposed she was worth her weight in gold to him.”

  “Perhaps she wanted to find a little gold for herself.”

  “You mean — you bribed her from him?”

  “Certainly not. But I shall make it worth her while. She came to me last night when you were over at the school-house, discussing me with old Jordan, no doubt. She was in tears. Said she only knew inn business, and Malpas had thrown her out. She had heard cook or someone say I wanted a maid, and would I take her?”

  “As a maid or as a singer?”

  “Both, I hope,” said Rose, preening herself on her acumen.

  Although it would probably change their type of trade, Tansy could not deny that it might well be a smart move for the Blue Boar. “But where w
ill you find the money to make it worth her while?” she asked.

  “Nobody is asking you to pay,” snapped Rose.

  “You mean it won’t have to come out of our takings?”, persisted Tansy, once more up against this mystery of where her step-mother got her money from.

  Rose turned on her in sudden fury. “Your tongue needs slitting. You ask far too many questions!” she cried violently.

  Tansy, half-cowed, turned away. “At least tell me this,” she asked from the doorway. “Where is she to sleep?”

  Rose shrugged as if the matter were of little consequence — showing herself, perhaps, less clever than she had supposed. “I don’t use my room overlooking the yard any more. The one at the head of the outside stairs.”

  “My father’s room,” remonstrated Tansy. But Robert Marsh’s widow did not seem to hear her. She was busy painting her sandy lashes black.

  All that summer Gladys Grumbold was with them and carefully minded her manners. She was accustomed to work, kept out of Tansy’s way as much as possible and served Rose assiduously. In fact, her clever fingers were into everything. In her quiet way she tried to learn everything about the running of the Blue Boar, wanted to know where everything was kept and asked all manner of unexpected questions, eliciting admiring co-operation from Dilly and Diggory and completely unhelpful monosyllables from Jod. Tansy even caught her prying into the account books. But the girl had soon made herself indispensable to Rose. She followed her mistress into shops, admired and advised, and carried all the wildly extravagant parcels home. And summer evenings she sang for the customers out in the inn courtyard, choosing romantic ballads or gentle love songs, keeping her bold eyes lowered and setting her cap at no man.

  “But her bawdy songs brought in twice the money at the Crown, and her being here does not seem to have lured any of their custom to us,” grumbled Rose, sitting by the little mulberry tree eating sweetmeats while Tansy served the usual number of drinks.