“In France you’ll have plenty of English friends. You’ll make a little England of your own. You’ll be its queen.”
She looked cheered at that, happy to indulge the fantasy. “And will you stay at my court and join our English revels?”
“What, with all that bickering and gossiping?” Smiling, he handed her the wineskin. “No, I’ll be the admiral of your navy and sail to Cathay.”
“Ah, you would leave my happy little English palace?”
“Only to fetch you riches to furnish it.”
Their fingers touched as she took the wineskin. Neither of them moved their hands apart.
“And what will you bring me?”
“Ships bursting with spices and silks and ivory and gold.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Let me sail with you.”
His heart leapt. “Is that your wish, my queen?”
“Wish? Bah! As your queen I
command
it.” She held out her hand in mock majesty.
He took it. Kissed the back of her fingers like a courtier. But he did not let go. He turned her hand over and kissed her palm. He felt her shiver. With pleasure? He looked up at her. At her lips parted in suspense, red from the cold, red as if from kissing. At the tendrils of her hair that danced with the faint breeze. At the soft white skin of her throat where her blood pulsed. He hungered to kiss her. They were alone. No one to see. Nothing to stop him.
Nothing except that look of pure trust in her eyes. His mission was to protect her. Not ravish her.
“Time to move on,” he said, and got to his feet.
The winter days were short, and soon the trees’ shadows lengthened across the fields as if longing to lie down and rest. Adam was glad to reach the Boar’s Head Inn outside Aldbrook. The holly-wreathed windows, where a few candles were already lit, invited two cold and weary travellers, and the sound of singing inside promised cheerful company. Adam gave their horses’ reins to the boy out front, handing him a penny, and as they opened the door they walked into a cloud of warmth, damp with the breath of ale drinkers who seemed to fill every table, and pungent with the oniony aroma of mutton stew. Drinkers lounged at the bar as well, loudly singing a ribald ditty that Adam knew from the taverns of London—an ode to a large-breasted girl from Dover. Elizabeth, wide-eyed at the scene, kept close to him as he nudged past the singers to ask the barkeep about lodging for the night. He almost had to shout to be heard.
“
Two
rooms?” the barkeep shouted back. “Sir, I cannot give you even one. We’re that full up, I’ve got these gentlemen sleeping three to a bed. It’s the winter fair at Hertford.”
A wiry man beside Elizabeth with a nose the color of a raw beet jerked his grinning face around to her, sending the ale atop his tankard foaming over his hand. “Plenty of room in my bed, lass. Just me and Peter over there, and he’s dead to the world. Oh, and Jock, of course,” he added, leering down at his codpiece then back up at her. “A fine, upstanding fellow is Jock. You’re welcome to join us.”
Adam winced. He’d promised her the real England and damned if she wasn’t seeing it.
She blinked at the man and blurted stiffly, “My brother and I are going to Braydon for the wedding of our cousin.”
Adam almost laughed as the drunk tried to focus on her face, mystified at her recitation. “Are you now? Well, he’s welcome, too,” he said good-naturedly. “Mayhap Nan from the kitchen will join the romp. She’s a game wench.” He flung his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulders, his hand dripping ale, but before it landed on her Adam pushed between her and the lout. “Come, Isabel, we’ll be on our way. Barkeep, how far to the next inn?”
“No need to travel so far, sir,” the barkeep replied. “Make your way to the Bents’ cottage a half mile along the Hertford Road. Three beech trees mark their lane. They take our overflow. You’ll find good vittles there, and oats for your horses. Tell them Ralph sent you.”
Adam was navigating Elizabeth to the door as the beet-nosed man began singing,
“A lass making her way up to Braydon,
Through snow and through ice came a-wadin’.
When she reached the Boar’s Head
It was three to a bed…”
Adam pulled her out the door but she turned back, enthralled. “A poet.”
“…So the lass lost the head of her maiden.”
They found the cottage dreaming under the moonlight. Adam knocked on the door, and a woman in a neat cap and apron opened it, balancing a baby on her hip. Adam smiled and asked if he and his sister might break their journey for the night. “Ralph at the Boar’s Head said you might have two rooms.”
The woman glanced at the figure on horseback behind him in the dark. “A cold night to be a-journeying, sir. You’re right welcome. You’ll share a bed with my father, and your sister can share with my two little girls. If that suits, ’twill cost you six shillings. Comes with bread and small beer at dawn to break your fast.”
He thanked her gladly and beckoned Elizabeth. She dismounted without looking too much like a princess who had always had a groom to offer a step down from her saddle. He ushered her inside under the thatched roof that smelled familiarly of musty clover, like a stable. Following her in, he bent his head to go through the low doorway. The room was dim, but warm from the glowing peat fire in the hearth. They seemed to have interrupted the family at supper, for a scatter of people sat in a ragged semicircle before the hearth, four adults on stools with wooden trenchers of bread and sausage on their laps, five children on the floor spooning up bread in milk from wooden bowls.
A ruddy-faced man stepped forward, wiping his hands on his breeches. “Where are you bound, sir?”
“Chelmsford,” Adam said.
The man offered his hand. “Walter Bent.” He jerked his chin toward the woman who was taking Elizabeth’s cloak and showing her to the hearth. “My wife, Katherine.”
The ceiling was so low Adam’s fingers brushed its beam as he pulled off his cap. He shook the man’s hand. “The name’s Fitzroy. And we thank you for your hospitality, Master Bent.”
He was finding it hard not to guide Elizabeth and pull up a stool for her like the lady she was, but he could see that she was relieved just to stand before the fire and warm her hands. A thin young man got up from his stool and genially offered it to her, saying, “Sit you down, mistress.” She sat, stealing glances around at the cottage with barely hidden interest at its foreignness. The floor was beaten earth, the wattle-and-daub walls were whitewashed all over, and the room’s main furniture was a battered trestle table. There seemed to be just two rooms on this level, the common one and a kitchen at the rear, bisected by a staircase of five bare steps leading to a low-ceilinged upper floor. The room was smoky from the peat fire—Adam saw it was making Elizabeth’s eyes water—but everything was clean, the hearth well swept, the table scrubbed smooth and boasting a pair of wax candles, though unlit since wax was expensive. This was no rough laborer’s hut, but the home of an industrious yeoman, a farmer of some means.
“Will you and your sister sup with us, sir?” asked Bent.
“Thank you. I’ll see to the horses first.”
“There’s a byre. Only Kat’s cows there, so plenty of room. Just nudge Buttercup and Old Nut aside. Help yourself to oats for your horses. Willy, go show him.”
A boy of about ten sprang to his feet and Adam was about to go with him, but caught Elizabeth’s anxious look at the prospect of being left alone with the family.
They won’t bite,
he wanted to assure her. He said to the woman, “My sister would be glad of a little warm milk if you can spare it, mistress. The ride was cold.”
“With pleasure, sir,” she said as she laid her baby down in its cradle. “And a little honey in it, mistress? I warrant ’twill do you a world of good. Margaret, fetch some milk.” A little girl scampered into the kitchen.
Adam went out with young Willie, who told him all about a newborn foal as they led the horses around to the byre. The boy helped him unsaddle the horses, and then, using his hand, chopped the film of ice on the water in the trough and filled a bucket while Adam scooped out oats.
“Shall I brush them for you, sir?”
“Thank you, Willy.” He handed him a penny, which the boy eagerly pocketed, then he headed back to the cottage, not wanting to leave Elizabeth too long. When he walked in he was surprised to see her chatting happily in the midst of the family circle.
“Adam,” she said cheerfully, “this is Master Horner, who is Mistress Bent’s father.” A hunched and toothless old man nodded in Adam’s direction, though his milky eyes bespoke blindness. Adam said a respectful “Hello, sir,” and Elizabeth went on to introduce the others—an aunt Cecily and a son, Arthur—the young man who’d given her his stool—and his wife, Meg, who was heavily pregnant. “Arthur and Meg,” she reported with the pleasure of an insider, “plan to move into a cottage of their own in the spring.”
“Aye,” Bent said with some pride, “in the heart of the village. They would have moved in right after the wedding at Christmas, but a storm toppled an old oak on the place and broke its back.”
“We’ll have it mended by Easter,” said Arthur.
“Better have,” Meg said with a teasing nudge in his rib.
Adam, sitting down to join the circle, caught Elizabeth’s glance at Meg’s swollen belly as though calculating the wedding less than a month ago. She looked at him with obvious surprise at the family’s indifference to the situation. He shrugged with a smile that said
Country people get on with life.
The lady of the house, who’d been busy at the hearth, handed Elizabeth a steaming bowl. “Here’s your warm milk. Fresh today. None gives better than Old Nut.”
Elizabeth looked delighted as she took it. “I thank you, mistress, with all my heart.”
“You have a fine property, sir,” Adam said as Bent handed him a tankard of ale. A shaggy sheepdog padded over to him and laid its head on his knee. Adam gave its ears an energetic scratch and the dog closed its eyes in bliss. “How many acres?”
“Speak that again,” the old man said suddenly.
Everyone looked at him. “Speak what, Grandfa’r?” Arthur asked.
“Not you. The young mistress. The traveller. Speak that again, what you just said.”
A few faces idly turned to Elizabeth, but others went back to their supper as though used to the old man’s oddities. But his demand made the hair stand up on the back of Adam’s neck. Before he could warn Elizabeth, she replied as though it were some parlor game she was eager to join, “I will right gladly, sir, if you will remind me what I said. Are we to make a rhyme of it?”
“It’s her!” he declared. “The child of Old King Harry. The young princess.”
Mistress Bent frowned at him. “Don’t talk daft, Father. Here, have some ale.”
But the old man was struggling to his feet. “I’ll never forget that voice.” He looked in Elizabeth’s direction, his fingers groping blindly as though to touch a mirage. “I was on the road to St. Alban’s, me and my wife, the Lord rest her, when you came to London. Eleven year ago it was, come Lent. A hundred men or more rode with you. Least, that’s what the road shook like, for I heard their horses and choked on their dust. But you stopped them all to speak to a housewife who’d run out with flowers, calling for you to take her bouquet. People thronged from every door and lane, but I was near you and I heard you sweetly tell that housewife, ‘I thank you, mistress, with all my heart.’ And the people cheered ‘God bless the lady Elizabeth,’ and my good wife, Lord rest her, said you were the bonniest maid she’d ever seen. ‘I thank you, mistress, with all my heart,’ that’s what you said. Lord bless us, I’ll never forget it, not as long as I live.” He bowed low to her. “Your Grace.”
The room went silent. They all stared at Elizabeth. Even the children, who caught the change in their parents and gazed up, expectant, in wonder. Elizabeth looked like a frightened doe seeing hunters in the bracken. It went straight to Adam’s heart. The chance to dissemble was lost.
Warily, with heart pounding, he stood. “Your memory serves you well, sir, where sight cannot. And, just as you heard true majesty in my lady’s voice, I hear loyalty in yours. Please, tell me I am not deceived.”
In the silence the old man said stoutly, “Need you ask, sir?” He bowed again. “I am Her Grace’s faithful servant.”
Elizabeth looked at him, her chin trembling. “I am heartily grateful, good sir.”
Bent slowly got to his feet in awe, his eyes never leaving Elizabeth. His wife stood up as well, equally dumbstruck. They shuffled back a step or two, as though aware they must not stand so close to royalty. The aunt and the son and his wife followed. Then the children. Elizabeth was left sitting all alone. The whole family, gaping at her, seemed frozen.
It sent a chill up Adam’s spine. Could he really trust these people? Elizabeth’s life, and his, lay in their hands. But something struck him. Their utter lack of fear. There was no shrinking and quaking. They looked at Elizabeth as extraordinary, golden, perhaps even closer to God, but still a fellow creature who had eaten bread with them, warmed her hands at their fire, laughed with them. She was special, but she was theirs.
“Good people,” he said, “you have shown us great kindness this night. I must now ask even more of you—that you keep my lady’s presence here unknown. The stakes are no less than life and death. Will you take pity and gift her with your silence?”