King's Fool

by Margaret Campbell Barnes

  He was fair and good to look upon like the rest of his family;clever and self-confident, yet somehow lacking the dependable firmness of his father. His fine leather boots were tooled in Florence, his cardinal red hose were the latest craze in Rome, and his slashed doublets could only have been cut in Paris. Athletic as he looked, he used some womanish kind of perfume and liked to impress the ladies by introducing Italian words into his conversation with seeming casualness. Or was I being unfair to him because I have never had the advantages of a rich man’s son?

  The truth is I did not like him from the first. Perhaps I was jealous of him because, with him and his fine friends about, Mistress Joanna had no need of my company. He knew all the latest songs from Paris, and smiled tolerantly at our homespun kind of entertainment.

  Actually, even had he invited me to help with their merrymaking, I should have been far too much occupied. For weeks I was kept busy checking the bales of silk and boxes of delicious-smelling spices which had filled the hold of the ship in which he had sailed home. Besides which it fell to my share to cope with a mass of figuring concerning some deal which he had made in Florence on his father’s behalf, this being rendered the more complicated because he had bought at lower prices than we were accustomed to, and Master Fermor, being the honest trader he was, altered all his own prices to regular customers accordingly.

  Master John talked a good deal about that cheap contract, though I had the feeling that my master was not altogether happy about it. But what Master John talked about most in company was how he had met our Cardinal Wolsey’s agent, John Clark, in Florence, and on what friendly terms he and this confidential agent were. When it came down to facts it appeared that young Fermor, finding him financially embarrassed in a foreign country, had lent him money. And always we were hearing how beholden this John Clark had been to him, and—what was far more important, I suppose, to anyone who went to Court—how beholden the great, all-powerful Cardinal himself would be when he came to hear of it. Without doubt Master John’s high-born in-laws, the Vaux family of Harroden, would be mightily pleased. But unfortunately it was his own father’s money that had bought the gratifying situation.

  “How much did you let him have?” asked Master Fermor anxiously, that last evening when the guests his son had been bragging to were finally gone. Because his son had avoided talking business until almost the moment of his departure and I had stayed up late to bring my master the account books he had asked for, I could not but overhear.

  “Nearly two hundred pounds,” Master John admitted. “That was why I could not buy the silks from Barbarino’s of Venice as usual.”

  “But Barbarino’s stuff is good. Whereas I know nothing of this new Florentine merchant, save that his prices are cheaper—”

  “But do you not understand, Sir, how much more important this was than a mere trade deal?” explained the son of the house, with scarcely veiled impatience. “Cardinal Wolsey is the coming man of Europe. Between ourselves, his agent was over there negotiating for the Papacy. His gentleman usher, Cavendish, told me when I was last in London that they have very high hopes. Think what it would mean to us to have the Pope himself remembering your obligingness!”

  The prospect was so amazing that I admit I upset an ink-horn and started repairing my clumsiness in order to delay my departure, and so heard my master mutter something about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush and there being a regular clutch of ambitious cardinals to choose from. And Master John, who obviously considered anyone to be old-fashioned who was not in the swim of Court life, said in his cocksure way, “Well, in any event, I acted wisely. Even from a trade point of view alone I was looking after your interests. For this clerk of his was so grateful that he has promised to bring our name before milord Cardinal next time it comes to ordering silks for those rich robes he wears. And we all know how wealthy Thomas Wolsey is. And how extravagant he can be! Why, this new house he is building at Hampton will be grander than the King’s palace at Greenwich.”

  “Let us hope that this man Clark remembers,” said Richard Fermor, only partly mollified. “Men have short memories, I often find, when they are no longer needing anything.”

  “You will get the order, never fear,” his son assured him. “And in the meantime there on your table is the residue of your money which I brought back after paying off the ship’s master.”

  “His freight charges were higher this time,” commented my master, lifting up a rather meagre bag of coins and motioning to me to wait just as I reached the door.

  “Iniquitous, I call them,” agreed Master John. “You know, Sir, you should really lay down more ships of your own instead of chartering. All the other merchants of your standing do.”

  “I already have six,” commented his father, with a wry smile.

  “Well, at least there are fifty sovereigns towards the seventh,” laughed Master John, indicating the moneybag.

  Whether his father thought this much or little to bring back I do not know. “Have you counted them?” he asked.

  “Hurriedly, before joining the others for the hunt yesterday morning. But I am no clerk. Better check them again.” Thanks to his father’s exertions John Fermor had married into a titled family and his mind was never seriously on the family business. Indeed, he affected to despise it. He was so much interested in social advancement that the more solid romance of commerce passed him by. After he had taken an airy leave before returning to his real interests in London it was as if some whiff of Court life were gone and his father’s room looked solid and ordinary again, yet somehow remarkably comfortable. “Here, Will, take this money with you and count it before entering it in the foreign ledger, and then put it in my strong room,” ordered its owner as soon as we were left alone. Normally he would have locked it away himself, but there was a weariness of disappointment in his voice. To rear a son who grows too grand for gratitude could be, I thought, more bitter than to lose him, still warmly loving, in battle.

  Although I had sometimes counted the contents of money bags before, this was the first time that ever I was entrusted with the strong-room key. I thrust it into the wallet hanging from my belt and carried the bag down to the deserted estate office and, untying its leather thong, spread a flood of glittering sovereigns across my table. Fifty of them, and some silver, according to the accompanying statement. It might not seem much to the Fermors, but to me—who had seldom had the handling of more than a few shillings of my own—it looked enticing as the wealth of all the Indies. I set to and counted it and had half risen again, prepared to sweep it all back into the soiled leather bag, when suddenly I stopped in surprise. I had counted fifty-six sovereigns. Six sovereigns too many. Nearly thrice as much as my wages for a year. Master John, in his careless haste, must have reckoned them wrongly. Instinctively I rose to run and tell him, but remembered that he had already gone. I had heard the horses. And in any case what would six of his father’s sovereigns be to him? In his gay life and the excitement of returning to London and of reunion with his wife he was not likely ever to think of that grubby money-bag again.

  And then the despicable thought came to me that neither his father nor the bailiff need ever know either. Jordan had been out since morning settling a dispute about some straying cattle, and Master Fermor was on the point of riding into Northampton to catch up on some business which had been delayed during his son’s visit. I—and I alone—knew about those six odd pounds.

  I came slowly to my feet and stood with them spread out temptingly along my outstretched palm. Balancing the forces of good and evil, as one might say—the white and black spirits, as Mistress Joanna had said they were portrayed in that royal masque. The thought of her, so honestly fought against during my preoccupation with affairs, rushed back into my mind. Now that her brother was gone and life would be falling into a normal routine she would probably be needing me again. Asking me to sing to her some evening when the day’s work was done, in that well-furnished family room when her father was awa
y, perhaps.

  With six golden sovereigns in my pocket I could go into the best tailor’s shop in Northampton and buy myself a velvet doublet—even a velvet doublet with slashed sleeves. I could buy a pretty fairing and appear before her, not in the guise of an insignificant clerk, but like those sons of neighbouring land-owners who had been bringing her gifts and with whom she had been laughing and talking so much of late. For only some devil of injustice knew why I, who loved her so much more ardently than any of them, must always appear at such a disadvantage! After all, I argued, though I might be plain of face, I had a reasonably good leg that would look the better in silk hose. Having been smiled at enticingly by the scatter-brained young sister of one of her brother’s friends, I could not but realise that good living and responsibility must have improved me and given me poise.

  The coins were half-way into my wallet and I had moved, dreaming of finding favour by such means, to the open window; and it must have been the sight of fields brown in furrow that brought me back to sanity. What sort of figure should I, Will Somers, who had once sweated at the plough, cut in a slashed velvet doublet? And somehow the sight of practical farm buildings brought back to my mind the day when I had stood beside Uncle Tobias’s water butt and sworn to Richard Fermor in that cracked, adolescent voice of mine, “God strike me dead if I ever wittingly cheat you!” And should I now break my word to a master who had ever been just and considerate to me?

  Far better that I should spend my small, honestly earned wages on taking that brown-eyed dairymaid who doted on me to the fair—except that brown eyes never did much move me.

  I could hear the stable boy bringing round Master Fermor’s horse. Clutching the bag in one hand and the odd coins in the other I made for the stairs and rushed up two at a time towards his room. “Sir—” I panted breathlessly, almost colliding with him at the top.

  “Pardy, what is the hurry, Will?” he exclaimed, in annoyance.

  “The money,” I said, feeling that I could not rid myself of it quickly enough. I held out the sovereigns all sticky in my palm. “There are six more than Master John told you. He must have miscounted them.”

  My master stood at the top of the stairs, a man of medium height and age, good-looking, with gloves and riding crop in hand. A moment more and he, too, would have been gone. He frowned down at the money, annoyed as he always was by carelessness. I do not think that any other aspect of the matter occurred to him at that moment. If I had imagined—and half hoped—that he would tell me to keep some of the money as reward for my honesty, he did not. Richard Fermor either took honesty for granted in the people he employed, or was instantly rid of them. “Well, put it away now with the rest and give Jordan the key. And be sure to make the necessary alteration in the ledger,” he instructed me, his frown relaxing into a half-smile. “I thought at least a hayrick was afire.” And as I flattened my thinness respectfully against the wall, downstairs he went, seemingly all unaware that a mighty spiritual battle had been fought.

  But I spoke of it to Father Thayne that Friday when I went to Confession. I had been badly shaken by the strength of the temptation and by how nearly I had come to falling, and kept imagining how I should feel now if I had. And, truth to tell, I was afraid for the future, lest, being over much trusted, some other time I might succumb. But that saintly man gave me then, as always, understanding reassurance. “Oh, no, my son. Dishonesty is alien to all your parentage and upbringing. That is one dragon which you have slain,” he said. “Just as you will keep in honourable check the powerful force of affection which plagues you and which alone drove you to contemplate keeping your master’s money.”

  “Then—you have guessed?” I whispered.

  “And prayed that you might be given strength to keep it as something wholly beautiful and good. But always bear in mind, my son, that, being in his household, there are more serious and subtle ways in which you could cheat him than by stealing merely money.”

  Father Nicholas Thayne was right. Whatever temptations might assail me during the rest of my life—and they were legion—all temptation to line my own pocket dishonestly had retreated from me for ever. Somehow the incident had left me hardier spiritually and grown to manhood.

  Perhaps my master sensed this growth in me. From then onwards he usually took me with him when he rode abroad on business.He would hand over to me customers’ money uncounted, and in all matters of business he gave me his confidence as he would to Jordan—a confidence which I found to be more precious than a purse full of ill-gotten gold or any sense of importance or smiling favours which it might buy. More than once I went with him to East Anglia.

  In Ipswich he pointed out to me the grazing land and house where Thomas Wolsey had been born, and I was amazed to see that it was no bigger than my Uncle Tobias’s farm. And there I beheld the great trading ships which I, being inland bred, had always longed to see. He decided to take his son’s advice, and in the yards on the River Orwell I watched the shipwrights laying down a new ship for him, and was allowed to clamber aboard and watch the massive timbers being bolted together for the deep, cavernous hold.

  And never shall I forget the kindness I received at Neston when a travelling friar who had lain a night or two at Wenlock Priory brought me the news that my father was dead. About farm and buttery the dairy people did me small, simple kindnesses. That day Jordan somehow brought himself to admit gruffly that I had been of some use to him. My sweet young mistress had tears in her eyes when she spoke of my loss. And it was then that I discovered the warm heart beneath Emotte’s severity. “You have no home or parents now, poor Will,” she said, laying her hand on my arm in a rare gesture of emotion. “Because the good God has never given me the children I have longed for, you must come to me if there should ever be anything I can do for you.”

  In spite of her protests and to her huge delight I hugged her hard, and no man can have dared to do that in years. “I have the best home in the world here at Neston,” I assured her.

  My master, in his practical way, offered to lend me a horse to go back to Shropshire and see my friends and settle my father’s affairs, and I would gratefully have gone; but it was just at that time that I first noticed Mistress Joanna began to look pale and listless. Perhaps I noticed it before the others, because I looked at her so often from my seat at the lower table. “Even you cannot make her laugh any more,” whispered Emotte, beginning to grow worried.

  “She will grow better as the warm spring weather comes,” prophesied Father Thayne to comfort us.

  She made so good a pretence at welcoming her father home from a journey to Norwich just before Christmas and at exclaiming over the exciting parcels he had brought that for the first few hours he noticed nothing amiss. But at supper, when she scarcely spoke and sat toying with her food, I saw him glancing anxiously at her from time to time during his jovial account of his doings. Next day Emotte prevailed upon her to stay in bed, maids scurried upstairs with hot bricks and possets, and towards evening, while I was working dejectedly by candlelight, my master came to me.“Will, she is really sick,” he said. “Take my roan Swiftsure and ride into Northampton to Doctor Mansard. Bring him back with you at once. It is blowing up for a foul night, but you will know how to persuade him.”

  I was up from my stool in a moment. “Are you afraid that it might be—”

  “The same sickness that took my others? It could be. God knows she looks transparent enough.”

  “Or the fever that Master John spoke of on board his ship?”

  “I, too, had thought of that. A man, without being sick himself, can be a carrier, they say.”

  “But it is surely too long since he was here.”

  We were talking in quick, half-finished sentences, as I struggled into coat and boots. He must have felt how mutual was our anxiousness. “Here, take my cloak,” he said, dragging it from his own shoulders and setting it about my own. “I have told Jeremy to have Swiftsure ready saddled. And, Will,” he added awkwardly, “I know that you
care as I would have you care—that you would never spare yourself in her service. If I have ever misjudged you in this matter…”

  His worried voice tailed off, and I was out of the door and then out in the blustering night, his cloak warm and comforting about me. I am no great horseman and was always terrified of that wicked-eyed roan, but somehow I urged him through that night of lashing rain, by some miracle not breaking our necks in ruts or potholes. And by morning light Doctor Mansard was by my little lady’s bedside. He stayed at Neston for three anxious days and nights, caring for her with all his skill. Emotte nursed her devotedly. And by the end of a week the fever had abated and the patient smiled wanly and knew us all again. Her father must have told her that it was I who had fetched the doctor so swiftly, for she sent for me and thanked me, though the effort tired her.

  There were no Christmas festivities at Neston Manor that year, but it was arranged that Master Fermor should take her to London in the summer.

  “She grows stronger, and Emotte says she eats her food and takes the remedies Mansard ordered,” he told me. “But she is so quiet, so listless—so unlike my laughing little wench. I must be growing old, for I cannot seem to rouse her. Something seems to be worrying her.”

  “Is it not possible that at a time like this she may still be fretting for her lady mother?” I suggested, out of my own experience.

  We stood in silence. In that moment we were less master and clerk than two desperate men at the end of our resources. And then the idea came to me. “She used to laugh at a kind of play of shadows I made on the wall by candlelight,” I recalled. “Would you allow me, Sir, to try to distract her?”