Authors: Jane Feather
Pippa awoke soon after dawn. She lay warm and relaxed under the heavy covers, listening to the cheerful crackle of the fire that some anonymous servant had lit in the hearth at the first peep of day. It was good to feel a chill in the air after the exhausting heat of the long summer. Good to look forward to a breakfast of porridge and mulled ale. And then she would ride.
A burst of energy surprised her. It had been weeks since she had awoken feeling energetic and full of the day's promise. She sat up. She was not in the least sick. Instead she was starving.
She saw the dry bread that Martha had left for her and laughed out loud. She couldn't imagine ever wanting to eat anything so unappetizing. She slid to the floor and rang the handbell for her maid.
Her eye fell on the folded parchment that contained King Philip's orders for her restricted existence. She picked it up with a grimace of distaste and reread it. It seemed fairly clear that without Lionel's permission she couldn't leave her chamber, let alone the palace on a riding jaunt.
Pippa refolded the paper and tapped it thoughtfully against the palm of one hand. Lionel had said last night that he would visit her this morning, but she had no idea what time. A host of things could delay him, one of their interminable council meetings for instance. She was expected to sit here and wait for him.
But maybe not. If she was very careful to avoid being seen by any member of the court, she could leave the palace secretly for an hour. It was still very early, few people would be up and about in the public rooms. Her groom would be escort enough, he always had been before.
She went to the window and stood looking out, tapping the paper now against the glass. She didn't want to stir up an ant's nest, things were bad enough as they were, but surely she could slip out just for an hour. One hour in the crisp fresh air of early morning to celebrate how well she felt.
She would go, Pippa decided . . . and to the devil with the consequences. “Martha, bring me porridge and mulled ale,” she instructed the maid almost before she had fully entered the chamber. “I am going riding.”
“Yes, m'lady. You're feeling well, then?”
“Very,” Pippa stated, stretching luxuriously. “Hurry now. I'm famished . . . oh, and send a page with a message to the stables. Fred should meet me with the horses in the blacksmiths' court in a half hour.” She would take a leaf out of Lionel's book when it came to clandestine excursions and use the parts of the palace frequented almost exclusively by servants. No one would notice her or her horse in the bustle of the blacksmiths' courtyard.
Pippa ate her breakfast with relish and then chose the most sober costume in the linen press. A dove-gray velvet gown with a dark brown silk hood would not attract attention. She would take the back stairs and corridors just as she had done before when meeting Lionel at the kitchen water steps.
She could not be accused of disobeying the spirit of the royal edict even if she was defying the letter, she reflected as she slipped from her chamber. She would not offend the queen's sight, or Philip's.
Her lip curled slightly but her mood was too buoyant this morning to be downcast for more than an instant. She hurried down the stone stairs that gave onto the blacksmiths' court through an arched entranceway.
The court was crowded with servants and grooms leading horses towards the blazing braziers where the smiths in their leather aprons worked at the anvils, apprentice boys plying the bellows with desperate vigor. It was hot and noisy despite the freshness of the morning.
Pippa saw Fred holding her sorrel mare and his own cob at the far side of the court. He had a rather puzzled air as he looked around him, clearly wondering why his mistress had chosen this as a rendezvous. Pippa stepped out into the court and then stopped, frozen in her tracks.
From the stone arch opposite her three men strode into the smiths' court. Philip, Ruy Gomez, and Lionel Ashton.
She stepped back into the shadows of the gateway but it was too late. They had seen her. Her mind whirled. She could turn tail and run, hoping that it would never be mentioned, or she could brazen it out.
As she looked at Philip she was filled with a great loathing for that short, slight man. He reminded her of an evil gnome with misshapen legs and a receding hairline, the supercilious coldness of his expression, and the dark circles of dissipation under his eyes.
What possible right did he have to banish her? Mary had that right, but Pippa could not believe that it was Mary who had decreed her exile for something as trivial as a rival pregnancy. Her husband must have prompted her, somehow convinced her that Lady Nielson's loyalty to Elizabeth was a stronger threat than they had thought.
And they were quite right about that.
Pippa thought of her correspondence with Elizabeth and a glitter of defiance lit her hazel eyes.
She stepped out of the shadows and glided into the open court. Her head high she approached the three men and with a swirl of her skirts curtsied deeply.
“Forgive me, Highness. Mr. Ashton bade me fetch my horse here if I wished to ride this morning. He did not think, I am sure, that Your Highness would find a reason to come to such an unlikely place as the smiths' court. I would not have offended your sight intentionally.”
She rose from her curtsy although the king had not bidden her do so, and stood holding her whip against her skirts, her eyes fixed without expression on a stone in the wall behind Philip's head.
Philip said nothing, merely stared stonily right through her.
Lionel stepped between them as if to shield one or both of them from the sight of the other. “The error was mine,” he said in his calm remote tones. He laid a hand on Pippa's shoulder and turned her away, swinging out the folds of his cloak to envelop and hide her as he stepped behind her.
Only then did the king move. He spun on his heel, Ruy Gomez following, and they returned from whence they'd come, whatever had brought the king to the smiths' court forgotten or dismissed.
“My horse is the sorrel.” Pippa pointed with her whip. “Will you ride with me, Mr. Ashton?” She tried to sound cool and collected but she was aware of a slight tremor in her voice now that the confrontation was done.
“I will ride with you,” he said as distantly as before.
“I could not have known Philip would come here,” she said with soft vehemence. “Of all the ill luck!”
Lionel made no response. He waited until she had mounted the sorrel with her groom's assistance then took the reins of the cob. He spoke to Fred. “I'll escort Lady Nielson. You may return to the stables.”
Fred loped off and Lionel in calm silence mounted the sturdy brown cob.
“That's a most inelegant mount for a courtier,” Pippa observed with a tiny smile.
“It will serve the purpose,” Lionel said indifferently. He nudged the cob's flanks, directing him out of the court.
Pippa drew up beside him. “Where will we ride?”
“In the park.”
Silence fell between them until they reached a broad grassy ride beneath the trees. Fallen leaves crunched under the horses' hooves and a cascade of gold and orange and yellow fell around them from the branches above.
“What more could Philip do to me?” Pippa demanded, unnerved by Lionel's continued silence. “Send me to the Tower?”
“I doubt that, but he's a bad man to anger. You would be advised not to do it again.” He sounded so detached, so matter-of-fact, so unsympathetic.
“It was not intentional,” she repeated. “But I had such an urge to ride and I didn't know when you would come to me.”
He turned his head and regarded her closely. “You look different this morning.”
“I feel different. Full of life . . . but how true that is.” She laughed but Lionel did not smile and she wondered if she had angered him despite his seemingly matter-of-fact attitude.
“I've upset you,” she stated.
“No,” he denied. Pippa had not upset him, but seeing her there facing down Philip with that proud set to her head, the defiant glitter in her eyes . . . that had distressed him beyond words. The contrast between the conscious, courageous young woman who would not bow to the king's will, and the insensible, fragile body that he had nightly carried from Philip's presence filled him with a rage so powerful it nauseated him.
“You
are
angry with me,” she insisted.
He drew rein abruptly.
“No!”
he stated fiercely. “No, Pippa, I am not.” He leaned across and took her face between his hands. “Believe me.” He kissed her mouth and the horses shifted beneath them.
“God's blood!” he muttered. “Let us dismount.” He swung from the cob and Pippa, more than happy to accept this change of mood, slid to the ground before he could come round to help her.
“We seem destined to make love in the open air,” she observed, going readily into his arms, resting her head on his shoulder as she looked up into the gray eyes where urgent desire mingled with something else that disturbed her. Something distressful.
She touched his face with her fingertips. Gently, tentatively brushed his eyelids. She stood on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth, wanting to banish whatever it was, wanting to see in his gaze only passion, the same passion that burned in her loins.
He caught her to him, kissed her deeply, sliding down with her to the carpet of leaves that crunched and crackled beneath them as they loved one another in a hasty scramble of tangled clothes and limbs.
Pippa pressed herself upwards into him. His hipbones were sharp against her soft flesh as each thrust drove him deeper and deeper inside her. Their eyes were open, fixed upon each other. She saw the moment when the tide would take him, and he saw the same in her face. He held back for an instant, not breathing, and then as the wonder spread into her eyes he thrust once more.
Pippa cried out, biting her lip till she tasted blood, and held him against her, pressing her hands into his back as if she could fix him forever against her, live forever in this glorious incandescent instant of bodily joy.
But it passed as it always did, leaving her feeling for a moment bereft. Lionel rolled sideways and lay on his back, his hand over his eyes, his chest heaving as if he'd run a marathon.
She leaned over him, propped on one elbow, and kissed him again. Laughing he caught her against him and rolled with her until she lay on her back again and he hung above her.
A calm mouth, gray eyes, where she read both compassion and distress. An expression so familiar and yet unknown, so terrible and yet reassuring. She had never seen him look like this before. But she had. Somewhere in the shadows of her mind, she had seen that expression on his face. A darkness gathered around her. She stared up at him, then her eyes found the serpent brooch at his throat. It had disturbed her last night. Now it terrified her.
She sat up, pushing him away, dashing a hand across her mouth as if to get rid of some vile taste.
“What is it?” he said, sitting up beside her. “Pippa, what's the matter? Are you sick?”
“I don't know,” she said in a voice that didn't sound like her own. “Who are you? What are you?”
“What do you mean?” He tried to smile, to laugh even, but he knew, a cold shaft in his heart, that the time had come.
“Something bad has happened,” she said, feeling for words. “I know it. I have always known it in some way, but not so certainly as now. And
you
did it.” She looked at him with hard, accusing eyes filled with horror.
“No,” he said. “No, I didn't, Pippa.” The denial sounded feeble to his ears, unconvincing, because it was not rendered with conviction. He blamed himself for what had been done to her as much as he blamed Philip.
She stood up slowly, straightening her skirts automatically. Lionel rose with her. She leaned against a tree, instinctively needing its support, and faced him. “You will tell me now, Lionel. You will tell me what this bad thing is.”
The same hard, accusing, horror-filled eyes forced him to look at her, forced him to face what had to be done.
“Yes, I will tell you,” he said as a great calm came over him. “But you must listen to the end.”
She nodded but her eyes never left his face as he began speaking. And they stared there unwavering until he had fallen silent.
She touched her belly. “This child is Philip's,” she said as if confirming it to herself. Her voice was flat, expressionless, and her eyes were now vacant, without any emotion, as if she was no longer capable of feeling. And it filled Lionel with terror as her horror and anger could not do.
“This child is Philip's,” she repeated. “And you helped to put it there. You and my husband.”
This time she almost spat the words at him and he flinched. He had given her no explanation, no excuse, just the plain unvarnished facts. To excuse himself had seemed impossible. But now he knew he had to do or say something to lessen her unutterable disgust and contempt.
“Your husband,” he said. “You must understand that they threatened him with exposure, but more than that they threatened the life of his lover.”
“And I counted as nothing when compared to his lover,” she stated, cold and bitter as the grave. “My husband is of no further interest to me. But what of you, Lionel? What did they know about you that would compel your so willing assistance?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I gave my assistance in my sister's name . . . and for England's security.”
“Oh, what unimpeachable, unselfish aims!” she scoffed. “What's the sacrifice of one woman when set against such worthy goals?”
“I didn't know you,” he said, hearing how pathetic a defense it was when set against such an outrage, such an atrocity. “I thought . . .” He tried again. “I thought I could ignore the person and see only the goal. I found I could not.”
“Oh?” She raised her eyebrows. “You found you could not. Once Philip's seed was securely planted you found you could indulge the luxury of remorse. Is that it?”
“No.”
But she brushed right past his denial. “And what twisted goal gave you the idea to make love . . . no, to have sex with this tool of the Spanish? Remorse? Pity? Or just the desire to experience what your king had had?” The words flew at him, poisoned darts that found their mark, each and every one of them.