Secrets at Court

by Blythe Gifford

  Her lady and her mother and the secret. That was all that stood between her and those wretched creatures.

  His hand, she realised, still cradled her shoulder and he squeezed it, a gesture that seemed more intimate than any kiss they had shared. ‘I am sorry. This, I cannot make right.’

  Simple words that nearly undid her. When had anyone ever told her such a thing?

  Her fingers met his. ‘You are a kinder man than you think, Sir Nicholas Lovayne.’

  To her relief, he straightened, breaking the intimacy. ‘And you are a gentler woman than you show, Anne of Stamford.’

  No, she was not. She was a woman who knew something that must be kept from Sir Nicholas Lovayne at any cost.

  A smile now. ‘All will be as it must.’ She waved him away. ‘Go. You must not worry.’

  You must not become curious or suspicious or ask more questions.

  For keeping that secret had been, simply, the reason for her life. Now, she would keep it for another reason.

  She would keep it so that the caring she had seen in his grey-blue eyes, caring she had never seen from another person, would not turn to abomination.

  And as he left to make arrangements for the beds and the horses, she gazed after him, choking on truths she dare not speak.

  I am not the woman you think I am. I am a woman whose life is based on a lie and I hope you never discover the truth about me.

  * * *

  Nicholas forced himself to leave Anne and plunge into the distraction of the mundane. Let the serving girl attend her. He needed distance, needed to rend that invisible tie that kept pulling him to her.

  Exactly the sort of tie he never wanted.

  That was what had trapped his father into marriage with a second wife. There had been no logic, no reason to the choice. And later, all of them had regretted it, even the woman who had blinded his father to the truth.

  But at the time, his father, full of love—longing—could think of nothing but this woman.

  Nicholas would never make that mistake. Not with anyone. Certainly not with Anne of Stamford.

  Kind, she called him. No, he was not kind. He was not given to passions of any sort.

  Many were. Men like the Prince and his father roared with laughter or anger, loved who or what they would. They let their swords escape their brains and rode into battle blinded with blood lust instead of the sharp, clear-eyed calm needed in order to stay alive. They killed or maimed or, conversely, gifted friends with presents worth a ransom, acting as an animal might, with no more control than a squalling babe. He had never been a man like that. His father’s life had taught him well.

  Instead, he watched. He assessed. He investigated. He planned. Only then did he act. And when something went wrong, and something always went wrong, he reassessed and adjusted.

  There was always another way, a different choice, if you took the time to think instead of letting fear or desire overcome judgement.

  And if frustration or anger sometimes choked him, he swallowed it and moved on. It was his strength, this control. It had kept him far away from the dangers of too much anger.

  Or too much love.

  The spectre of the dead man in Winchester rose to haunt him again. Dead. Gone. With nothing to show he had lived on this earth.

  Yet that was what Nicholas had chosen. A life with nothing to weigh him down or hold him back. And when it was over, he would leave nothing behind.

  That was the way he had always wanted it.

  And still did.

  Chapter Nine

  The next morning after prayers, Nicholas was ushered into the Cathedral Priory and admitted to the office of Simon Islip, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  As he dropped to his left knee and kissed the offered ring, Nicholas turned an assessing eye on the Archbishop. He was, as the Prince had said, in his seventh decade, and as stern and prickly a character as one would expect the highest church official in the realm to be.

  Nicholas rose.

  They eyed each other warily.

  Nicholas had youth on him. That was a comfort. He only hoped the stubborn old man’s mind could summon up the memories he needed.

  In well-rehearsed words, Nicholas conveyed the King’s respects and the Pope’s request, careful to keep the impatience from his voice. The journey itself was no doubt the most difficult part of this assignment and that was half-done. All he needed now was for the Archbishop’s clerk to find the document so that the man could mutter his blessing over it. Then, the only thing standing between Nicholas and France would be the English Channel.

  He finished speaking and waited. The Archbishop’s face did not waver. Nor did he speak.

  ‘We do this at the request of His Holiness,’ Nicholas said, finally, wondering whether the man had heard him at all.

  Now, the lips twisted a bit. ‘The French Pope?’

  He blinked, somewhat surprised. Typically, such words were not said aloud. ‘And the request of His Grace the King.’

  Islip had not always bowed to the royal will. Despite that, or maybe because of it, the King respected him.

  The Archbishop waved a hand. ‘A man grows old. His tongue grows loose.’ Beneath greying brows, his blue eyes took on a distant look. ‘God has taken the bishops of Worcester, London and Ely with the pestilence. How am I to replace such men?’

  The Archbishop had his own concerns, as all men did. It was Nicholas’s task to overcome them. ‘The Prince asked that I help you in any way I can. As you can understand, he wants all to be in order when the official dispensation arrives for he is eager to be wed.’

  ‘A little too eager,’ Islip snapped. ‘Now he expects us to be just as eager.’

  Nicholas had the uneasy feeling that the man would have said the same if he had spoken to Prince Edward himself. ‘I believe,’ Nicholas said in as calm a tone as he could muster, ‘that all that must be done is to locate the document, review it and issue a statement. I am sure that is what His Holiness expects.’ His Holiness had barely allowed enough time for them to complete even that simple task.

  ‘All that he expects? To locate and examine a document from when?’

  ‘Fourteen years ago.’ That was when the appeal for the dissolution of Joan’s marriage to Salisbury had gone to the Pope and the legitimacy of her clandestine marriage to Holland had been upheld.

  Fourteen years. Before the Death. Before this man was Archbishop. Before Nicholas had been knighted. He tried to remember himself then, at seventeen. Attached to the Prince’s household, yes, but more interested in the newly founded Order of the Garter and more fearful of the impending plague than interested in the marriage, or lack thereof, of the King’s cousin.

  The Archbishop dropped his forehead into his hands and rubbed his eyes, as if the years he battled against had suddenly settled upon him. ‘Explain it to me again,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘About the marriage.’

  Nicholas could understand the man’s confusion. It had taken several tellings before even he had grasped the complexities.

  ‘As I understand it,’ he began, ‘the Lady Joan and Thomas Holland conducted a clandestine marriage between them when she was twelve. After that, he went off to war. A few months later, her mother forced her to marry the Earl of Salisbury.’

  ‘When she was already married?’

  ‘Exactly.’ It sounded impossible, stated so simply.

  ‘How could she consent to such a thing? Did she not tell them she was wed in the eyes of God?’

  The same questions had nipped at Nicholas, but he had stifled them. ‘I cannot say what the Lady Joan might have said to her mother or to Salisbury.’ Or to the King and Queen, who had taken responsibility for their distant cousin when her father died.

  Islip sighed. ‘So this lady, married already, married anoth
er man with her family’s permission. What happened then?’

  ‘When Holland returned to England, he asserted his claim of a prior marriage and took it to the Pope, who agreed.’

  ‘Which Pope?’

  How was he to know? And what difference did it make? Nicholas was beginning to wonder whether the situation was too complex for a man of Islip’s age to understand. ‘It took two years for the petition to be granted, so twelve years ago.’

  ‘Pope Clement.’

  Well, that part of the man’s memory worked well enough. ‘Pope Clement. So now, Pope Innocent wants verification that all was in order with the dissolution of the marriage to Salisbury before Lady Joan and the Prince wed.’

  The Archbishop leaned back in his high-backed chair and crossed his arms. ‘Let me see if I understand this. Lady Joan had a clandestine marriage to one man, then a legitimate marriage to a different man. So she was, at one time, married to two different men.’

  The baldest way to look at it. No surprise that the Prince’s desire to make the woman his wife had led to whispers across the kingdom. ‘You could say so.’

  ‘Was there a reason she and Holland had to marry in secret?’

  He shrugged. ‘That her parents preferred a different husband?’ Holland was an honourable knight, but Salisbury would be a landed Earl. Only a young foolish maiden, or an old fool like his father, would choose with the heart.

  ‘So the Pope allowed the first man, Holland, to have the second marriage to Salisbury put aside and Lady Joan was restored to him.’

  Nicholas nodded. ‘Now, the Pope only wants to verify that all was done properly.’

  In the silence, Islip drummed his fingers on the curved wooden arm of his cushioned chair. ‘And the Earl of Salisbury has now married again,’ he said, finally.

  ‘I believe so.’ What difference did it make?

  ‘And so Thomas Holland’s widow has once again entered into a clandestine marriage, but this time, with a man that, should she have deigned to ask, would have been forbidden.’

  He should not have doubted the Archbishop’s grasp of the situation. The man understood the complexities better than Nicholas himself. ‘Yes. For two reasons, as I’m sure you recognise. They are too closely related because they share a grandfather. In addition, the Prince was godfather to one of her sons.’ To stand as godfather to a child was to be as close as family.

  ‘So once again, she ignores the laws of the Church, and once again the Holy Father in Avignon blesses her actions. Now he comes to ask me if all is in order?’

  Nicholas swallowed a smile and coughed. It was easy to understand the man’s annoyance. He shared it. ‘I believe what the Pope wanted was to create some inconvenience before bestowing his final blessing.’

  ‘Well, he has done that,’ Islip snapped. ‘I wish he had been content to inconvenience the two people at fault. Or even someone who had a hand in the business. I was not even Archbishop then.’

  ‘Who was?’ It was not a fact that a fighting man had much use for.

  ‘John de Stratford,’ Islip answered. ‘No man has more integrity. He even defied the King for the rights of the clergy.’

  A strange statement. Did Islip have suspicions he did not share? ‘I never suggested otherwise.’

  ‘And he also chaired the King’s council when Edward was on the other side of the Channel.’

  All no doubt interesting to Islip, but not to Nicholas. So the Archbishop and the King had a complex relationship. That was true whenever the head of the state and the head of the church had to work together. ‘All that is needed is to find the charter,’ he said, trying to bring the man’s attention back to the matter.

  ‘All? That was three Archbishops ago. How am I to find the records now? What if they are gone?’

  ‘What do you mean gone?’ Couldn’t the parchment pushers keep track of documents? ‘One doesn’t just misplace a communication with the Pope,’ he snapped back. ‘Particularly when it involves something like this. Someone must remember. Who were his clerks? Do you know?’

  ‘Yes,’ he answered, slowly. ‘I was among them.’

  Nicholas was surprised, though perhaps he shouldn’t have been. ‘And did you work on this case?’

  The answer came slowly. ‘No.’

  Not surprising. He certainly would have said so before now if he had. Or perhaps not. The Archbishop seemed to be having trouble remembering, as the Prince had feared. Or, perhaps, his memory was selective.

  ‘The records must still exist.’ Dusty parchment, as the Prince had said. ‘Someone must have copied the petition before it went.’

  ‘To find them will take time.’

  ‘Then you had best begin,’ Nicholas snapped, tired of the tedium and heedless of his immortal soul. ‘Time is the one thing we do not have.’

  He bowed just low enough for ceremony, a request for the Archbishop to wave his hand and mutter a blessing so Nicholas had leave to go, but the man did not oblige. Finally, Nicholas raised his head. Islip sat, silent, eyes narrowed as if trying to peer into the past.

  ‘More than ten years,’ the man said, just above a whisper. ‘Since then, we have lost a third of our people to the Death. And then more to the French. Who alive remembers where a single piece of parchment might be?’ He looked at Nicholas, suddenly realising he was not alone. ‘What if we cannot find it?’

  Until they are wed, your task is undone. Dread settled on his shoulder. What choices would be open to him then?

  He met the man’s eyes, to be certain he would be understood. ‘If you cannot find it, then you will have the honour of informing His Grace and the Prince that they must cancel the wedding.’

  * * *

  All morning, Agatha had chattered away as Anne sat near a window in the common room, alternately looking down at her needle and up toward the street, watching for Nicholas’s return.

  The lodgings he had selected for them were within sight of the Cathedral, but designed for travellers, not pilgrims. No one minded that she stitched instead of prayed as she waited.

  Though she did pray, silently and fervently, that Nicholas would discover nothing to raise his doubts.

  That all would be as it must.

  Yet when he walked in, a scowl marring his face, she bit her lip and motioned for Agatha to leave them. She saw no hint of suspicion, no reason to fear danger, and yet...

  ‘You do not look pleased,’ she said.

  His eyes met hers and he seemed to soften, just for a moment. Because of her? She dared not hope for that.

  He sank onto the tavern bench and called for ale. ‘I’ve spent the morning trying to make a stubborn man of seventy remember and hurry. It went about as well as you would expect.’

  She let a smile escape. No reason to fear. Yet. ‘But all will be as it must.’ Her voice held a question.

  ‘You mean, as Edward and Joan want it?’

  ‘As I do. And as you do, as well.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, it will. He’ll find what he needs to bless the previous dissolution or he’ll bless their union without it.’

  The tightness in her stomach eased. The scowl was impatience only. There was nothing to fear.

  ‘I know it is not an easy thing and I thank you for that,’ she said. ‘I know Edward and Joan will, too.’

  ‘Speak of other things,’ he said, abruptly. ‘What did you do today?’ Today. She had waited by the window, as unmoving as a stone.

  ‘I skipped about Canterbury’s outer wall, then danced in a ring with the pilgrims waiting at the church’s door.’

  Shock appeared on his face at her words. They were bitter words she would never have used around Joan. But she had let resentment steal her tongue. What could she do? Nothing without help. Instead, she had thought of all she wanted to do, to have, to be. Things she wou
ld never have, no more than she would be able to skip or dance.

  He shook his head. ‘A thoughtless question.’

  ‘A rude answer. What I did in truth was finish a piece of needlework that will be part of the hangings in my lady’s new bedchamber.’ She held it up, at once proud of the lush, green stitches and wistful that it would grace a marital bed.

  He nodded, without really looking at it. ‘Don’t feel as if you have to say only what would please me.’

  She smiled. ‘It must be evident that I don’t.’

  ‘And you have heard me say things that...’

  ‘That you are glad I have not shared with my lady?’

  The ease of his smile warmed her. ‘We have both, I think, had many years of minding our words.’

  Oh, yes. Years and more until she had thought she would never, never be able to share herself with anyone. Even now, to reveal even a sliver of all she hid from the world day after day was a gift beyond measure, so precious that she could almost forget that earning his trust had been a duty to her lady.

  ‘And I’m afraid,’ he said, not waiting for her to answer, ‘that I let my temper slip in front of the Archbishop today. But I knew little more than he did about the events surrounding Lady Joan’s first dispensation from the Pope.’

  She murmured something intended to sound sympathetic. Outside, the Cathedral’s bells sounded, sparing her the need to speak in the silence that followed.

  His gaze returned to her, as if he had discovered an idea. ‘Do you?’

  She was silent for too long.

  ‘Do you, Anne?’

  She rushed into speech, so she would not have to answer the question. ‘What about the man who carried the petition to the Pope as you just did? That man would know something.’

  ‘Who even remembers that man?’ A foolish question, but it seemed as if he were saying who will remember me? ‘Do you know who he was?’

  Safe to answer, since she did not. She shook her head.

  She could almost see his thoughts as he explored other possibilities, other paths. ‘But there must be someone. Who wrote the documents that were sent? Who talked to Lady Joan and Sir Thomas?’