The King's Confidante: The Story of the Daughter of Sir Thomas More

by Jean Plaidy

  “How big he grows!” said John.

  “His sister is nearly as big as he is. So you are not at the Court today, Master Harris?”

  “No. There is work to do at home.”

  “Tell me, do they really think so highly of the master at Court?”

  “Very highly indeed.”

  Dorothy pulled up a handful of grass and frowned at it.

  “You are not pleased that it should be so?” he asked.

  “I was thinking that I would like to see all the girls as happily married as is Mistress Roper. She was married before the master became so important. Master Roper was here … they grew to know each other … and they eventually married. I was thinking that that is the best way in which to make a marriage.”

  “You are thinking of William Dauncey?”

  She nodded. “Mistress Elizabeth does not seem to understand. Of course, he is very handsome … and very charming to her … but there is a light in his eyes which, it would seem to me, is put there by his love of the advancement Sir Thomas More can provide, rather than for Sir Thomas's daughter.”

  “Dorothy, you are a discerning woman.”

  “I love them so much. I have been with them so long. Mistress Elizabeth is very clever with her lessons, but that is not being clever in the ways of the world. I wish that some quiet young gentleman like Master Roper would come here to study, and Mistress Elizabeth gradually get to know him. And I would like to see her take him instead of Master Dauncey.”

  “You have served Mistress Roper for a long time, Dorothy. She has educated you and molded your thoughts, and you think that everything she does is always right. The baby is the perfect baby. Master Roper is the perfect husband. There are some who would say that Master William Dauncey is not such a bad match. His father has a high post at Court. What more could you want?”

  “Love,” she said. “Disinterested love. Ah, I have said too much.”

  “You need have no fear, Dorothy. But let me say this: When Mistress Roper married, her husband was caught fast in heresy. Heresy, Dorothy! Is that then more desirable than ambition?”

  She was thoughtful. “His heresy,” she said, “grew out of his searching for die right, his determination to do what he considered best. Ambition—such as Dauncey has—is for self-glorification. There lies the difference.”

  “Mistress Dorothy, you are wondrous learned.”

  “My mistress has taught me to read; she has given me books. She has taught me to form my own opinions—that is all.”

  Dorothy picked up the baby and held him against her. “Sometimes I wish that the master were not so well received at Court,” she said. “I would rather see him more often at home … with good people about him … like you, John Harris … than with the most handsome gallants of the Court.”

  Then Dorothy left him and walked to the house.

  How peaceful was this scene! she thought.

  Now came the sound of someone playing the lute. It was too well played to be Lady More. Now she heard Cecily's and Elizabeth's voices, singing a ballad.

  “Please God keep them happy,” prayed Dorothy. “Let us go on just like this … forever and ever … until we are called to our rest.”

  There came the sound of other voices, singing with the girls— Giles Herons and William Dauncey's.

  Dorothy shivered. The voices of the young men reminded her that life was continually changing.

  Too many honors were being thrust upon the master, and honors brought envy; they brought the sycophants, the false friends, who were like wasps that fed on the lovely fruit until it was ruined and dropped from the branches.

  THAT YEAR came the winter of the great frost.

  There was no keeping the house warm; the bleak winds penetrated into every room, and there was ice on the river. Blizzards swept across the country.

  Mercy was hardly ever at home; she had so many sick people in the hospital. Margaret and Elizabeth were often there helping her.

  Mercy was very happy. The hospital was her life. Although others might deplore Sir Thomas's rise in the world, Mercy could not. But for his making a fortune in the service of the King, he could not have supplied the money which she needed to keep her hospital in being. But she was careful in the extreme. There was nothing extravagant about Mercy; she worked hard and enjoyed working hard. She remembered Erasmus's criticism of English houses, and she had no rushes in her hospital; there were windows that could be opened wide; and her success with her patients was gratifying.

  Mercy enjoyed those days when her foster father came to inspect her work. He would go among the patients, a joke on his lips. “Laughter is one of the best medicines,” he told her; and she was contented to have him with her whether he praised or questioned what she did.

  She would not admit to herself that she was not completely happy; she, who was so frank on all other matters, knew herself to be evasive in this.

  She would not admit to herself that she loved Dr. Clement. It is merely, she told herself, that there is so much talk of weddings and that makes me wonder if I shall ever be a bride. Ailie and Margaret are married; and now Cecily will have Giles Heron, and Elizabeth her William Dauncey; and because of all this I too look for love.

  Had it not always been so? The little foster sister had always feared that she was not quite a member of the family, in spite of everyone's attempts to assure her that she was. Now from Court came two gallants eager to wed the daughters of Sir Thomas More; but none came to woo his foster daughter.

  Not that Mercy expected it. She laughed at the idea of plain Mercy Gigs being wooed by such a dashing gentleman as William Dauncey.

  Moreover, Mercy did not want a Court gallant; she wanted Dr. Clement.

  And he? Why should he think of Mercy Gigs? But he did think of her—oh, as a friend, as a girl who was interested in medicine, as one who spent her time working in her hospital and who liked to ask his advice on certain matters.

  She must not be deluded. She was a nobody. She was an orphan on whom the Mores had taken pity; however much they tried to make her forget that, she must not. And John Clement? A young man of good family, high in the service of the great Cardinal, looked on with favor by the King's physician, Dr. Linacre. As if he would think of Mercy Gigs as anything but a friend.

  Ah yes, she reminded herself, all this talk of marriages makes me want what the others have. I want to be loved by a husband even as, when I was a child, I wished to be loved by their father.

  Cecily and Elizabeth had come over to the hospital on this day, although it was as much as they could do to plod through the snow even that far.

  They seemed quite pretty—both of them—with a certain glow upon them. That was being in love. Cecily was the happier perhaps; she was more sure of her Giles. But Elizabeth—more reserved than her younger sister—was she a little anxious about William Dauncey? Did she know—as others did—that he was an ambitious young man who believed her father could advance him? Poor Elizabeth! Like Mercy, she wished for marriage. Was she loving the ideal of marriage more than the man who would make it possible? Mercy uttered a silent prayer for Elizabeth. Cecily would be happy with her Giles. He was a lazy boy, good-natured, frank, not hiding the fact that his father had wished him to marry a Mistress More, and that he was delighted to find such a marriage to his liking. He had not William Dauncey's tight-lipped ambition. And was she right, Mercy wondered, when she thought that even Dauncey had changed since he had visited the house? Was his laughter, when he joined their family group and played their games and sang with them, was it a little less forced than it had been?

  The two girls laughed as they shook the snow out of their clothes.

  “Why, Mercy, what a day! If the blizzard starts again, we shall be snowed up and unable to get out at all… and no one will be able to get to us.” That was Elizabeth.

  Cecily said: “And you must come over to dinner today. Someone is coming, and he'll be disappointed if you're not there.”

  Mercy flushed; she k
new, by Cecily's quick glance at Elizabeth, who was coming.

  “If the weather is so bad, your guest may not arrive.”

  “I doubt if he'll come by barge. The ice is quite thick on the river. Oh, Mercy, what a lovely fire!” Cecily held out her hands to the blaze.

  “I was lucky, I gathered much furze and bracken during the autumn. I had those of my patients who were recovering go out and get it for me. We believe that exercise is good, and so is fresh air.”

  “We?” said Cecily almost archly.

  “You and Dr. Clement, I suppose,” said Elizabeth.

  “He is learned in these matters.”

  “Father says,” said Cecily, “that one day the King might take him into his personal service, and Dr. Linacre thinks that he is the best young doctor he has known. That will doubtless mean that the King will soon hear of it.”

  Oh, yes, thought Mercy, he is all that. He is rising in the world, and when he has gone far enough some nobleman of high rank will decide that he is a good match for his daughter.

  And John himself? He was as ambitious in his way as Dauncey was in his. He wished to discover new ways of defeating sickness. The favor of the King might help him to do that.

  Cecily and Elizabeth did not know that when they talked of the cleverness of John Clement and his chances at Court, they were showing Mercy, more clearly than she had ever seen before, how foolish she had been to dream.

  “So,” insisted Cecily, “you must come to dinner and be early. You will then be able to talk to him of the latest remedies for the pox. I am sure that will make entertaining dinner talk.”

  “We just came to tell you this,” said Elizabeth. “Mother is in a fine mood this morning. It is Margaret's turn to keep house this week. Poor Margaret! Mother is puffing about the kitchen, warning them all that if the beef is not thoroughly basted, someone will suffer. There is much running to and fro … and all because Dr. John Clement has become such an important personage. It is hard to remember that he was scarcely more than a boy when he first came to us to attend Father on his way to Flanders. The humble secretary has become a great doctor.”

  Ah, thought Mercy, too great for me.

  Just as the girls were about to leave, a young boy arrived. He was white-faced, and the snow nestled in his hair, so that, on account of the gauntness of his features, he looked like a white-headed man.

  “What is it, Ned?” asked Mercy, recognizing him as one of the boys from Blandels Bridge.

  “It's my father, Mistress Mercy. He's lying on the straw like a dead man. But he's not dead. He just stares with his eyes wide open, and he can say naught. My mother says to come to you and ask you to see him.”

  “You cannot go all the way to Blandels Bridge in this weather,” said Cecily.

  “He may be very ill. I must go.”

  “But the snow is deep. You could never reach there.”

  “It is less than half a mile; and Ned came here.” She looked at his feet. He was wearing a pair of shoes which had belonged to Jack, for Margaret's task was to see to the needs of the poor, and this she did with the help of her family's clothes.

  “You will not come back with us, then?”

  Mercy shook her head. She must stifle weakness. She was a doctor first. This was her hospital; she believed it must be the love of her life, for Dr. Clement—her affectionate friend, though he might be—could not marry her.

  “Then you will miss dinner.”

  “I fear so. I do not know how long I must stay at the cottage.”

  “Mercy,” said Cecily, “come and have dinner and go there afterward. Perhaps John Clement will escort you.”

  There was temptation. She pictured dinner in the beloved home, herself saying grace as she used to in the old days; she imagined the interesting conversation, and then, afterward, riding pillion with John Clement to the cottage by Blandels Bridge, listening to his diagnosis of the patents's ailment, offering her own.

  But sickness did not wait for such pretty, comforting scenes. Speed was everything in fighting sickness. A life could be lost by the delay of five minutes, let alone hours.

  “Nay,” she said. “I must go at once. Ned, wait for me. I must bring a few simples with me.”

  So Elizabeth and Cecily went back to the house on the other side of the pales, and Mercy trudged through the snow to Blandels Bridge.

  The blizzard beat at her; the familiar landscape had become unfamiliar, a thick white cloth was laid over everything, disguising the shapes of hedges and cottages.

  But Ned knew the way. She followed him blindly. Soon her fingers were numb, her feet icily cold. The journey—usually a walk of ten minutes—took the greater part of an hour.

  She thought: I shall miss him then. It is so long since I have seen him. He is so busy that he comes to see us but rarely. And when he does … I cannot be there!

  They had reached the cottage. The rushes stank. There seemed no air in the place, yet it was bitterly cold. The woman who had been sitting on a stool shivering as she watched the man on the floor, brightened when she heard Mercy's voice without.

  “God bless you for coming!” she cried as Mercy entered the cottage.

  And when Mercy looked into her eyes, she thought: That must be my reward.

  She knelt by the man on the dirty straw, and laid a hand on his burning forehead. He began to cough.

  “He has been coughing like that for hours,” said the woman. “It seems as though the cough will choke him.”

  Mercy said: “When the weather improves, I want to take him to my hospital. It is not good for him to be here.”

  The man's piteous eyes held Mercy's. He seemed to be begging her to make him well.

  She took one of die phials from her bag which she had brought, and gave him its contents. The close, cold atmosphere of the room made her shiver, and the smell from the rushes sickened her.

  She thought: If only I could get him away from here … into one of my warm rooms, with blankets and a comfortable pallet on which to lie. If I could give him hot soup, fresh air, who knows … I might cure him.

  “How is he, Mistress Mercy?” asked the woman.

  “He is very sick.”

  “Is he going to die?”

  Mercy looked into the panic-stricken eyes. How could she say: “I can do nothing for him here”? How could she say: “Clean out these foul rushes”? Why, to disturb them now would double the danger. He was not so far gone in disease she could not save him. If it were not for the weather, she would go to her foster fathers house; she would get strong men, and boards on which to place this man, and carry him away from this foul-smelling place which was his home. But how could she do this in a snowstorm?

  Mercy closed her eyes and prayed for guidance and, as if by some miracle, the door opened and there, seeming strong and all-powerful, was Dr. John Clement.

  “John!” she cried in delight. “You … here?”

  “Indeed yes, Mercy. The girls told me where you were, and I came to see if I could help.”

  “Thank God!” she said. “It is the answer to a prayer.”

  “And the patient?”

  He knelt in the rushes and looked into the sick man's face.

  “This place …” said Mercy, and John nodded. “If I could get him to the hospital,” she went on, “care for him there … I believe I could nurse him back to health.”

  John was silent for a while. Then he said: “I rode here. I tied my horse to a stake by the cottage. We could put him on the horse and get him to the hospital.”

  “Through the snow?”

  John's answer was to look round the room, at the foul rushes and the earthen walls, damp and noisome.

  “He cannot live if he stays here.”

  “Can he live if he is taken out into the cold?”

  “In a case like this, we have to take a chance.”

  “You would take this chance, then, John?”

  “I would. Would you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I would do as you
would.”

  Happiness came in strange places at strange times. The snow was blowing in Mercy's face; she was wet and numb with cold, yet warm with pleasure.

  She had rarely been so happy in her life as she was when she was walking through the snow with John Clement, the sick man, whom they held on John's horse, between them, while the pale-faced boy led the horse.

  THERE WAS a double wedding that summer.

  The marriages of Elizabeth with William Dauncey and Cecily with Giles Heron were to be celebrated in the private chapel attached to one of the mansions belonging to the Allington family.

  Ailie—now Lady Allington—was delighted to have her family with her for this occasion.

  Ailie was a happy person. Her husband adored her; she had a child now, but that fact had changed her little; she was still the gay and fascinating Ailie.

  With great pleasure she showed her mother the kitchens of the house. They were older than those of Chelsea and far more grand.

  Alice sniffed her disapproval of this and that, trying hard to find fault while she congratulated herself that it was her daughter who had made the best match of all.

  “Look, Mother. Have you seen these ceilings? Giles is most proud of them. You see how cleverly they are painted. You'll find nothing like that in modern houses. Look at these painted cloths. They all represent scenes of some battles. Do not ask me which, I beg of you, for I do not know. In the great hall we have Flemish tapestry, which is every bit as fine as that which my Lord Cardinal has in Tittenhanger or Hampton Court.”

  “Tilly valley!” said Alice. “What happens in the kitchen is of more importance than painted hangings or Flemish tapestry, I tell you. That has to be tested yet.”

  Ailie kissed her mother; she loved to tease… to tease them all, her half-sisters, her stepfather, her mother and her husband. And it was very pleasant to have them all with her again.

  Margaret spoke to her of William Dauncey. “Elizabeth loves him, but does he love Elizabeth? Or is he thinking solely of what Father can do for him?”

  “Well,” said Ailie, confident in her own charms, “if he does not love her, then it is for her to make him do so. And if he will not…”