Secrets at Court. Blythe Gifford

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СКАЧАТЬ news in my absence?’ Nicholas asked. It had taken near six weeks to travel to Avignon and back. Time enough for three intrigues and more to swirl about the court. He must prepare for this as he would prepare for a battle, knowing how the ground lay and where the troops massed.

      ‘Pestilence still stalks the land.’

      More than ten years since the last time. He had thought, they all had, that God’s punishment was behind them.

      ‘The King. Is he at Windsor?’

      The warden shook his head. ‘He’s closed the courts, suspended the business of the exchequer so men do not need to travel and fled to the New Forest.’

      The New Forest. A longer ride, then. Pray God he’d find no pestilence along the way.

      ‘How fares Prince Edward?’

      The warden shrugged. ‘He is a Prince, not a King. With the war over, he has little to do but cavort with his friends and with the Virgin of Kent.’

      Nicholas shot him a sharp look. Few were brave enough to speak so pointedly about Edward’s intended.

      ‘And you?’ The warden looked at him with open curiosity. ‘Was your journey successful?’

      Did the entire country know why he’d been sent? Well, he would not speak of it to anyone until he had seen the Prince. The besotted Prince who, instead of making an alliance with a bride from Spain or the Low Countries, had thrown it all away for love of a woman forbidden to him by the laws of the church and common sense.

      ‘I can only say,’ he spoke carefully, ‘that it will not go well with me if it did not.’

      For Prince Edward had expected him to obtain the Pope’s blessing of a folly too foolish to be forgiven.

      And Nicholas was a man who did not suffer fools. Even royal ones.

      A lodge in the New Forest—a few days later

      After all these years, Anne sometimes tried to run, as she did in dreams. Run as other women her age might, happily chasing their children, playing peek and hide.

      Instead, her gait was an awkward, rolling thing. Even when she walked, she rose and sank as if she were a drunken sailor on a tottering ship. The walking stick, a third leg to compensate for the useless second one, only made things more difficult. Sometimes, she tripped over her lame foot and could not withhold her curses, and when she fell, she had learned that rolling would soften the blow.

      She had stumbled when the King’s ambassador arrived, but fortunately out of his sight and hearing. Tall and straight, he swung off his horse and strode into the keep, his very ease mocking her.

      Poor, foolish Anne. Still longing for a body other than the one she had been born with.

      She paused before her lady’s chamber, gasping for breath, then pushed open the door without knocking for permission.

      Even that rude entry could not disturb Lady Joan’s perpetual smile. Anne’s news, however, would. ‘The emissary. He has returned.’

      The smile tightened, as if pulled by a vice. They exchanged a wordless glance. ‘Have him come to me first.’

      Anne held back a retort. Did the woman think to change the news if it were not to her liking? ‘But the King—’

      ‘Yes. Of course. The King will want to see him immediately.’ She rose. ‘I must find Edward.’

      Anne sighed. Joan would find her ‘husband’ and, if the news were bad, she would hear it together with him for the last moments she could call him so.

      ‘And, Anne...’ She raised her eyebrows. Not a question. A warning.

      ‘As ever, my lady.’

      The beautiful face relaxed into its accustomed smile. She took a breath. ‘All will be as it must.’

      Anne waited until her lady had turned away before she looked to Heaven for patience. ‘As it must’ meant as her lady wished it.

      She trailed her mistress out of the door, but there was no need to search for Prince Edward. He had already come, as if he had known her need. He took her in his arms, kissed her brow, murmured in her ear, as if no one were near to see.

      Anne pursed her lips, fighting a wave of pain. Not in her leg, no. That was perpetual, comforting in its faithfulness. This was different. This was the pain of knowing that no one would ever look at her that way.

      Forgive my ingratitude. Her perpetual prayer.

      She had no reason to complain. Her mother had assured her future at an early age, saving Anne from a certain fate of begging beside the road. Instead, she was a lady-in-waiting to a woman who, if today’s news were good, would one day take her place beside England’s King.

      Yet as her mistress and the Prince kissed, Anne looked on them with blatant envy. It was not Edward of Woodstock she coveted. For all his glory, he was not a man who appealed to her. She merely wished that a man might smile, his face aglow, just to see her.

      As it was, she was clever and unobtrusive and had a face most men did not care to dwell on, so if her expression ever slipped, which it often did, no one would be watching.

      They did not watch now, the Prince and her lady, as they turned toward the King’s chambers.

      ‘Milady, shall I...?’

      Without bothering to turn, Lady Joan shook her head and waved a hand in dismissal. And as the two walked off together to learn their fate, Anne stood in the hall, alone.

      Later, then. Later she would discover whether the Pope had been convinced and all was as it must be.

      There was a great deal to be made right. And the man who brought the news had not been smiling.

      Nicholas, they had called him.

      * * *

      Sir Nicholas Lovayne had rehearsed his speech during the whole of the ride from the port to the New Forest astride a borrowed horse. Time enough and more to get the words right.

      He was grateful he had, for the minute he arrived, they ushered him into the King’s private chambers and he faced the King, the Queen, Prince Edward and Joan, Countess of Kent.

      There was no more time to rearrange words.

      ‘Well?’ King Edward himself spoke, eyes as piercing as a falcon’s. Beside him, the Queen gripped his hand.

      Nicholas looked at Prince Edward and Lady Joan, for their lives were the ones at stake. ‘They will not be excommunicated for violating the Church’s marriage laws.’

      The Pope had had every right to do so, but Nicholas and some well-placed gold florins had saved their immortal souls. No small feat and more than they deserved.

      Thus was the privilege of royalty. To be rewarded for behaviour that would damn any other mortal.

      But that was only the first of the miracles Nicholas had accomplished СКАЧАТЬ