The King’s Mistress. Gillian Bagwell

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       CHAPTER THREE

      “YOU CANNOT GO!” JANE’S MOTHER CRIED, HER HANDS FLUTTERING in dismay.

      Jane stood at the foot of her bed, folding three pairs of stockings into a nightgown and packing them into a satchel.

      “With all those soldiers on the road?” Anne Lane paced, heels tapping on the floorboards, and then swooped to Jane’s side. “And Scots, most of them! You’ll be ravished and murdered.”

      “I shall have protection, Mother,” Jane sighed, frowning as she noticed a small tear in the sleeve of her favourite shift. “John will arrange for one of our tenants’ sons to ride with me.”

      “Small comfort! He may be worse than the soldiers, for all we know.”

      Jane’s heart softened at the sight of her mother’s face, pink with agitation beneath her white cap, and she pulled Anne to sit beside her on the bed.

      “Ellen is expecting me. Her first baby! I promised her as soon as she knew that she was with child that I would be there for her lying-in and to keep her company after. I cannot disappoint her.”

      Jane’s mother sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief.

      “I don’t know what John is thinking of. And your father. I should never have considered such a thing when I was a girl, and you may be sure my father and brothers would have had none of it.”

      Jane’s favourite uncle, Hervey Bagot, was a colonel in the Royalist army, and his son Richard Bagot had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Naseby. She thought that they would certainly have been in favour of her doing whatever she could if it would save the king, but she merely took her mother’s hand and kissed her cheek.

      “All shall be well, Mother. Cromwell’s men are too busy searching for the king to bother with me. And the poor Scots are fleeing for their lives, exhausted and hungry. I would be in more danger if I were a turnip.”

      ON SATURDAY NIGHT, JOHN RETURNED TO MOSELEY HALL TO MAKE plans with Wilmot for his escape to Bristol with Jane and to bring Wilmot’s horses back to Bentley. Once more Jane waited for him in the kitchen, sitting at the big table in the middle of the room. She had brought knitting to keep her hands busy, but the activity didn’t still the turmoil of her mind, and she threw down the needles and yarn and went to the window again. The sliver of moon cast a faint silver glow over the stable yard and outbuildings, and all was quiet.

      The big case clock in the great hall struck two when Jane finally heard John’s footsteps. She pulled the door open, and he moved heavily as he came in and threw off his coat. His whole aspect was one of despair and worry, and prickles of fear ran down her spine.

      “What’s amiss? Is it Richard?”

      “No,” he said, pulling a chair close to the fire and warming his hands above the flames. “I have no news of him.”

      Jane put a mug of brandy and hot water into his hands and he inhaled the steam and drank before he spoke again.

      “The situation is grown more perilous than it was. The king set out for Wales on Thursday night with one of the Penderels, but the crossing of the Severn is guarded by two companies of militia and all the boats have been seized. There was nothing for it but to return last night, and he’s back at Moseley.”

      The king, only six miles away, and still in danger. It was like something out of a play, Jane thought.

      “Oh, no,” she whispered. “What will he do?”

      The firelight flickered orange on John’s face, and it seemed to Jane there were lines around his eyes that had not been there only days earlier. His voice was hoarse when he spoke again.

      “Jane, I am loath to say what I am about to because I would not put you in danger, but I can see no other way.”

      Jane stared at him. What could he mean?

      “The king must ride with you to Abbots Leigh. Not Wilmot, but the king himself.”

      The shock was so great that Jane found she could say nothing.

      “He’s already disguised himself, Wilmot says, cut his hair and changed clothes with a poor woodsman so that none would know him.”

      Jane tried to picture the dashing young king who had rallied his troops at Worcester, grimy and unrecognisable.

      “We can clothe him in better apparel, and hope that he’ll pass as your serving man. But, Jane, this is far more dangerous than riding with Lord Wilmot.”

      “I must help him if I can.”

      John stared into the fire, and shivered despite its warmth. “When the king’s friends parted from him at Whiteladies,” he said, “they begged him not to tell them his plans so they could not be forced to reveal them if they were put to torture. Jane, if you were to be taken … The danger is great.”

      Jane swallowed. She was very much afraid at the thought of what might happen to her. But if she did not help the king to escape, surely he would be found and captured soon.

      “I’ll do it.”

      “Someone else must go with you.”

      “Henry.” Jane had always felt that in the company of her cousin Henry she could come to no harm, and she felt the more so now that he was a soldier. She recalled the steely determination in his eyes when he had set off with John the few days earlier that now seemed so long ago, and his bitter disappointment when they had returned in confusion, having left too late to join the battle.

      “Yes. Henry would go, and I’ll have less fear knowing that he’s with you.”

      “But when shall we go? Surely soldiers will be searching the houses hereabout and are like to find the king?”

      “Moseley has a priest hole, so the king is well hidden. But still he must fly soon.”

      Jane had been shown a priest hole once, in the house of a Catholic friend. It was a little space, not more than four feet square and three feet high, just big enough to hide a man or forbidden articles such as crucifixes, the entry hatch concealed beneath a close stool in the floor of a closet. It had made her skin creep to think of climbing down into it, with no air and no light save for a candle, and her heart went out to the young king.