Secrets at Court. Blythe Gifford

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      Chapter Two

      Usually, Lady Joan floated into a room and settled on to her seat as lightly as a bird alighting on a branch.

      Not today. Had the news not been to her liking?

      ‘What is wrong, my lady?’ Anne bit her tongue. She should not have spoken so bluntly.

      The Countess was rarely irous. When she was, Anne knew how to coax her with warm scented water for her hands and her temples, with a hot fire in winter or an offer to bring out her latest bauble to distract and delight her eye. If that did not work, she would summon Robert the Fool to juggle and tumble about the room. Sometimes, if they were clean and not crying, seeing her children could restore the balance of her humour.

      Normally, her mistress buried all beneath a smile and behind eyes that gazed adoringly at the man before her. But today...

      Anne put aside her stitching as her lady paced the room like a skittish horse. Then, she remembered the ambassador’s face. The news must not have been all Lady Joan wanted. ‘The decision of the Pope? Will you and the Prince be allowed...?’

      ‘Yes, yes. But first, they think to investigate my clandestine marriage.’

      Relieved, Anne picked up her needle. Well, thus was the reason she had been roused from her bed in the middle of the night. ‘I witnessed it, of course. And will tell them so.’

      The large blue eyes turned on her. ‘Not that one.’

      Her hands stopped making stitches and she swallowed. ‘What? To what purpose? You have no enemies.’

      Lady Joan laughed, that lovely sound that captivated so many. ‘Even our friends find it difficult to countenance the marriage of the Prince to an English widowed mother near past an age to bear. They think we are both mad.’

      Mad they were. But then, her lady had always been mad for, or with, love. It was a privilege most women of her birth were not allowed, yet Joan grasped it with both hands. She was the descendant of a King, born to all privilege. Why should this one be denied?

      Anne swallowed the thought and kept her fingers moving to create even stitches, as her lady liked them.

      ‘But we could not wait,’ Joan said, speaking as much to herself as to Anne. ‘You know we could not wait.’

      ‘No, of course,’ Anne agreed by habit, uncertain which of her weddings Lady Joan was thinking of. For what her lady wanted could never, never wait.

      ‘The pestilence is all around us. It could fell us at any time. We wanted...’

      Ah, yes. She spoke of Edward, then.

      This time, the pestilence had struck grown men and small children hardest. Even the King’s oldest friend had been taken. The Prince, any of them, might be dead tomorrow.

      The reminder stilled her fingers. Since birth, Anne had needed all her strength just to cling to survival.

      ‘Do you think we’re mad, Anne?’ The voice, instead of commanding an answer, was wistful, as if she hoped Anne would answer no.

      She sounded once again as she had all those years ago. Just for a moment, no longer a woman with royal blood, born to command, but a woman in love, desperate for reassurance that miracles were possible.

      Joan had worn the same face then. Blue eyes wide, fair curls about her face, pleading, as if one person were all the difference between Heaven and Earth.

      How could she answer now? Joan was mad. Playing with the laws of God and men as if she had the right. And suddenly, Anne wished fiercely she could do the same.

      Such choices did not exist for a cripple.

      ‘It is not for me to say, my lady.’

      Joan rose and gathered Anne’s fingers away from her needle, playing with them as she had when they were young. ‘But I want you to celebrate with me. With us.’

      Ah, yes. That was Joan. Still able to wind everyone she knew into a ball of yarn she could toss at will. So Anne sighed and hugged her, and said she was happy for her and all would be well, succumbing to Joan’s charm as everyone did. It was her particular gift, to draw love to herself as the sea drew the river.

      ‘It is settled, then,’ Joan said, all smiles again. ‘All will be as it must.’

      ‘Of course, my lady.’ Words by rote. A response as thoughtless as her lady’s watchwords.

      But her lady was not finished. ‘Have you seen him? The King’s ambassador, Sir Nicholas?’

      Anne’s heart sped at the memory. ‘From afar.’

      ‘So he has not seen you.’

      She shook her head, grateful he had been spared the sight of her stumbling as she stared after him.

      ‘Good. Then here is what you must do for me.’

      Anne put down her needlework and listened.

      An honour, of course, the life she lived. Many would envy a position at the court, surrounded by luxury. And yet, some days, it felt more like a dungeon, for she would never be allowed to leave her lady’s side.

      She knew too much.

      * * *

      Nicholas stood in an alcove on the edge of the Great Room of the largest of the King’s four lodges, watching Edward and Joan celebrate as if they were already wed in the eyes of God and his priests.

      All evening, men had come up to him, slapping him on the shoulder as if the battle were over and he had won a great victory.

      He had not. Not yet.

      A swig of claret did not help him swallow that truth, though Edward and Joan seemed to have no trouble ignoring it. Still, the Pope’s message had been private, not his to share. Nothing more than a formality. A few more weeks of inconvenience, then he’d find freedom.

      He scanned the room, impatient to be gone. The treaty with France was a year old, but Nicholas had spent little of it in England. King Edward now held the French King’s own sons as hostages and Nicholas had been one of those charged with the comings and goings of men and of gold.

      Now, instead of meeting the French in battle, King Edward, as chivalrous as Arthur, treated them as honoured guests instead of prisoners of war. He had even brought some of them to this forest hideaway to protect them from the pestilence.

      Well, a live hostage was worth gold. A dead one was worth nothing. And Nicholas’s СКАЧАТЬ