The Golden Widows Read online

  A worldly dame might have passed off the mistake but Kate was mortified. How crass and utterly stupid of her not to have grasped his reasons to begin with. He must think her such a young fool.

  ‘I crave your forgiveness, my lord. B-But the tale is so…so well known that I truly did not link the make-believe with…’ My father’s death. The words hung in the air between them.

  ‘And I am right glad you did not, Lady Katherine,’ he cut in. ‘May you keep such innocence.’ Oh, not again! The comment stung although his voice lacked irony. She might have struggled to defend herself except suddenly, despite the fur lining to his cloak, he shuddered, not at the cold fingers of the frosty air, but involuntarily as though an angel passed across his grave. ‘By Christ’s Blessed Mercy! It’s such an ugly way to die.’

  She drew a cross between her forehead and heart. ‘God grant that it was swift for my father.’ But the wry twist of his lips denied even that certainty.

  Clenching her gloved hands in her lap, she realised that Hastings had been scarred by the recent war, whereas Richard seemed hardened, if anything. Hmm, there was an unexpected vulnerability in the man beside her that did him credit and was unquestionably appealing. It was to her shame that she had spoken so crassly.

  ‘Madame?’ Eleanor rose, her dauncell’s antennae alerted to her mistress’s discomfort.

  Kate forced herself to look up. The players were watching her and Lord Hastings like grazing rabbits ready to scatter. She shook her head at her servant and, clearing her throat, asked huskily, ‘So what piece is it to be, my lord? Not Salome and John the Baptist, that’s for sure.’ Pray God that shaft had not flown amiss. She turned her head, fearful at his silence and found to her relief that his face was creased with amusement.

  ‘So humour is your sword and buckler, Lady Katherine. I must remember that in our dealings.’ It was spoken with the satisfaction of a hunter who has a hind in his sight. Our dealings. Well, she would pick up her skirts and outrun him if she had to.

  He seemed to expect some further wit from her but she had no answer, and with a tight smile, he rose to his feet. The players instantly fell silent. ‘Shall we begin?’ The authority in his voice resonated in the rafters.

  Master Whitfield stepped forward and after much ahemming began:

  We bid you, gentles all, to gather now

  Whether ye rule this land or guide the plough.

  For herewith we shall play, come sun, come rain,

  The tale of the Lion and the Knight Erwayne.

  I am King Arthur, come to narrate this story,

  Of how a brave youth rose to fame and glory.

  King Arthur then introduced each character and when it came to the Lion, who burst out with a roar from behind the screen and tripped, Lord Hastings, who had been watching with sucked-in cheeks, buried his head in his hands. She thought it was with despair at the poor player’s ineptitude but his shoulders were shaking with laughter.

  ‘Good man! Keep that in!’ he called out, then muttered beneath his breath, ‘Devil take it, I’ve seen statues with more life than these fellows.’

  Kate watched on stoically. The players had to mime while King Arthur narrated the story in hapless verse. Each man was so desperately earnest, and it would have increased their courage if my lord chamberlain could have leaned back and looked less like a fraught merchant watching his cargo-laden ship sink to the seabed. True, any bumblings in a performance before the court would be laid at his door but King Arthur, noting my lord’s frown, began to stumble his lines.

  Something had to be done. When Sir Erwayne defeated Sir Kay in combat, Kate clapped her hands in seeming delight. The stratagem worked. The players, reassured by her pleasure, budded confidence and by the time the Lion broke down the portcullis and bounded in to savage the evil Sir Salados, Lord Hastings looked to be actually enjoying the performance. Finally, when King Arthur’s narration ended with a blessing on his descendant, King Edward IV, the true and rightful King of England, begotten through the line of Mortimer and Plantagenet, Kate sprang to her feet applauding heartily! Although she could not see the players’ faces behind the masks, if rosy necks were an indication, they were gratified by her enthusiasm.

  ‘I do not think you should be concerned, my lord,’ she exclaimed, whirling round excitedly to face her companion. ‘A little more practice is needed, that’s all.’

  ‘You do not think there was too much gore? Some of the older ladies might not have the stomach for it.’

  ‘Well, Aunt Catherine has gone home and Aunt Cecily doesn’t usually object to anything except blasphemy. I do have some suggestions, though, that you might wish to pass on to Master Whitfield.’

  ‘Ah, I knew it.’ He reached out and took her gloved hand. ‘Then, come and tell him yourself. Attention, Master Whitfield and good friends all! My lady wishes to speak with you.’ The players halted in clearing their properties to the side.

  ‘No, my lord,’ laughed Kate, hanging back.’ I do not think they would…’

  ‘A third of their audience will be noblewomen, Lady Katherine. Have confidence! Come!’ He led her forward and stood back, allowing her the pulpit. The entertainers fanned out around her, the young men showing quills of arrogance and suspicion, the rest anxious to please, except for the seamstress who was preoccupied with moistening her lips at Lord Hastings in a come-hither fashion. What bothered Kate was that Hastings had noticed.

  ‘F-Firstly, it was most excellent.’ Kate beamed at them and swept them a curtsey, calculated to disarm their nervousness and they actually broke into cheers. ‘However, with my lord’s permission…’ At least Hastings’ attention was once more on her. ‘I should like to make one or two suggestions. There are ways you could provoke even more merriment.’ Their crestfallen looks were back again except for the ambitious seamstress.

  ‘Sir Lion,’ she addressed the eyeholes in the huge mask. ‘Why not behave more like a real lion? Find a flea, roll on your back to scratch it, snap at a horsefly. Purr sometimes. Play the lion for laughter. I am sure my lord here would pay for you to see the real ones at the Tower.’

  ‘Of course,’ he agreed, although Kate was suspicious there was indulgence rather than agreement in the twitch of his lips.

  ‘You, Damsel in the Wood, instead of waggling those…those false breasts, sirrah, why not use your eyes like this.’ She gave the boy a slow seductive stare and ended up blushing and self-conscious, laughing with them. ‘Or ask this young mistress here how she would do it.’ Guffaws of laughter broke out when the seamstress realised she had been caught out.

  ‘Sir Erwayne,’ Kate purred. ‘We all know the damsel is really a youth, but do try and look more genuinely tempted. Yes, share the gest with us and raise an eyebrow, but you must appear serious when you are gazing into “her” eyes. Perhaps you gentlemen are not aware how intense you look when you are about to melt a woman’s heart with your kisses.’

  Lord Hastings suddenly found an interest in the beamed ceiling, his mouth tightly seamed shut, except at the corners, When Sir Erwayne, whose golden curls were not a wig, opened his conceited, full-lipped mouth for argument, Kate forestalled him. ‘How did you do the gore in the combat, Master Whitfield?’ she exclaimed, whirling round to face King Arthur, suspecting that he would be delighted to explain. She let him take her across to the bloodied shield but Hastings stayed with the others.

  ‘Well thought out,’ she agreed sincerely as Master Whitfield explained the concealed bag of chicken blood in Sir Salados’ wig. She was trying not to mind that on the other side of the court, the seamstress had pushed her bodice lower and was actually conversing with Lord Hastings in simpering fashion. Sweeping back across to join them, Kate bestowed a generous smile on my lord chamberlain’s worshipper before she beamed at him.

  ‘So you were not interested in how the lance pierced Sir Salados, my lord?’

  ‘Towton was enough for me.’

  By the Saints, she had done it again, overstepped the mark with such utter tact
lessness. The bloodiest battle on English soil, fought in a snowstorm, with thousands slain. He had been part of that killing while she—

  Swallowing, she managed to keep her smile. The instant she could, she would escape his company. They just did not understand each other.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Lord Hastings was saying, ‘make the changes and if it pleases me, you shall play before King Edward.’

  As the players whooped and jubilantly slapped backs, Hastings held out his wrist to receive Kate’s hand and they farewelled the troupe and walked out into the watery green light of the ebbing sun.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me to participate, my lord. I enjoyed that very much.’ Spoken in formal manner and punctuated by a curtsey. Where was her maidservant? If only Eleanor would come out, she could retreat as fast as possible but Lord Hastings framed her shoulders with his hands as though he was calming a distressed child.

  ‘Sometimes I think you judge yourself too harshly, Lady Katherine. Any fool could see you were just giving Whitfield a chance to boast. Think no more on it!’

  ‘Boast, no! I thought if Master Whitfield felt appreciated, his enthusiasm and confidence would flow into the rest of his troupe.’

  ‘I’m impressed. Do you also deal with your household with such care for their feelings?’

  ‘I haven’t ever had a household of my own,’ Kate answered with a sniff. Her nose was running with the cold air and she fumbled in her girdle purse for a kerchief. ‘I am gradually taking over from Grandmother Bonville although she’d never admit it.’ Looking up, she snared him studying her. ‘Are we finished here?’

  ‘Yes.’ He held out his hand to her again. ‘Come, let’s forget about bloody mawed lions, shall we? Katherine?’

  ‘I-I’m not sure I can, my lord, because I just saw one in the bushes?’

  ‘What?’

  He turned his head and glimpsed the man in the lion apparel fumbling with his codpiece. An arc of water spattered the outside wall of the tenez court.

  ‘Not there, curse you!’ Hastings shouted, raising a fist. ‘Piss there again and I’ll stick your head up your—’ He remembered Kate’s presence. ‘Ignorant cur,’ he muttered. ‘Give them an inch and they take a plaguey yard.’

  With a further glare and an assertive flex of shoulders, he turned back to usher Kate down the path. Pleating her lips to staunch her giggles, she kept up with him for some paces until she remembered he might start talking about marriage. Darting a glance behind her, she saw with relief that Eleanor was discreetly following them.

  ‘You do not mind a walk, Katherine?’

  ‘No,’ she lied, and it would have been discourteous not to tuck her arm through his, when offered.

  ‘Would you like to see my barge? Hey, why are you laughing?’ But he was smiling, too, now. ‘I do have one.’

  ‘Yes,’ she giggled.

  ‘Stop laughing at me.’ Grinning, he reached up and flicked her cheek.

  They walked on companionably. It was needful to lift her skirts to keep the mire at the edges of the long puddles away from the furred trim of her over-gown. The path soon became more ruly, but then it divided.

  ‘Are you warm enough?’

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ She wasn’t but she did not want his arm about her. It would feel too comfortable and…well, best not. She did find him attractive and she respected him for admitting he had been affected by Towton. Not a milksop squeamishness but sorrow, revulsion. Would Will have returned feeling that way? Would he have been honest enough to say so?

  Peeking up, she saw that Hastings’ frown was back, making her wonder whether the memory of Towton was haunting him like some dismembered foe? Did he dream at night that he was back in the midst of battle and wake sweating and afraid? Maybe if he had a wife to hug him, make him laugh, the scars would heal quicker. Could she do that?

  But then she remembered the seamstress. Would his wife be able to tolerate that? Could she?

  Anyway, no one had mentioned the ‘wife’ word, thank goodness! Hastings would not want a plain ‘innocent’ like her anyway. Had Richard or the king even asked him?

  He chose the left-hand path. It meandered through a natural thicket of hawthorn, ivy and alder that had been tamed into a hedge and, judging by the lack of footprints, seldom used. Only a cock robin in scarlet and brown livery eyed them from beneath an arch of briar. Surely, a few minutes would bring them safely within sight of the Queen’s Bridge Wharf and as a contingency Eleanor had instructions about when to make her presence obvious.

  Suspicious, Kate glanced sideways but her lordly companion seemed more mindful of their surroundings than he was of her so she just breathed in the peace of the moment. The hedgerow mercifully thinned to a scatter of oaks and ash along the reedy tributary, and at the wooden bridge that could have taken them across to Millbank, Kate made pretence of looking at the water, wondering if Eleanor needed time to catch up. A few paces on they joined the bridleway along the Thames and turned towards the palace.

  Already the tired sun was failing, gilding the edges of the clouds and changing the walls of the abbey to a dusty, mellow gold against the smoky sky. Ahead, high above the glinting weathervanes that tipped the pinnacles and turrets of Ned’s palace, Kate could see a solitary red kite soaring imperiously, his feathers like fiery copper. Below him, the lozenged, grisailled window of the great hall was transfigured into a hundred tiny mirrors of dazzling vermillion. The sight stole Kate’s breath like a lover might.

  Her companion was keeping his own thoughts close. Maybe he often came this way; perhaps his office forced him to observe that one of the palace chimneys was not drawing like the rest or that the nearest gable had a missing tile. No, she was wrong.

  ‘I mean to live life to the full, every damnable instant.’

  The sudden, uninvited outburst from him sounded like some angry vow, as though he felt it his obligation, a duty owed to the dead beneath the battlefields of Mortimer’s Cross and Towton.

  ‘God keep you in his grace, my lord.’ The blessing bounced out too tritely. She must have sounded like his chaplain. ‘I meant may He give you many years, my lord,’ she corrected swiftly and then guessed she had offended him because he violently thrust aside the wands of willow and plunged down a makeshift way of jutting grass to where the land embraced the end of the wharf. Kate grabbed her skirts and followed, halting a little way off.

  For a moment he stared up at the glowing clouds as though they were two great hosts assembling for battle and then he looked round at Kate as if she were a little girl who had asked a profound question.

  ‘Come the spring, we’ll deal with the northern rebels once and for all, God willing. I just hope to Heaven we can snare Queen Margaret and the boy. If we don’t, he’ll forever be a thorn in our flesh.’ He looked back down at her. ‘I want to see Ned establish a dynasty, Lady Katherine, so we can sleep safe in our beds. We don’t want a world where your Cecily will lose her young husband in battle just like you did.’

  ‘I share your sentiments, my lord, but the Lancastrian prince is only a little fellow.’

  ‘Give him ten years more, and he will want the kingdom, and then we may need to sharpen our sword blades again and grease our rusting armour.’

  ‘God forfend!’ Kate looked up at him unhappily. This was not the conversation she had expected. Ten years from now she would be twenty-nine and he in his early forties, still young enough to fight, especially if he remained in high office. But anything might happen between now and then. She could not let him scythe away her peace of mind. She wanted a rosy future for her daughter.

  ‘Oh, come now, my lord,’ she exclaimed, in the hope of lightening his humour. ‘The boy, if he lives that long, will need more than envy to conquer England.’ She grabbed the thumb of her left hand. ‘To start with, there has to be some silly foreign fool willing to lend him the money for an invasion; what’s more, he’ll need sufficient misguided traitors to follow his banner, not to mention that he has an obnoxious mother whom nobody li
kes. Besides…’ She floundered, tapping her fourth finger. ‘Besides, Ned has you and my brothers to…’

  Lord Hastings’ hand fastened round both of hers and he was laughing at her vehemence. ‘Why, you little dragon fighter.’

  ‘If you can be serious, so can I, Lord Hastings!’ she informed him, pulling free. ‘Ten years is surely long enough for Ned to entrench himself in the people’s hearts. He’ll be as hard to shift as…as this tree, don’t you agree?’ She toed the nearest root for emphasis and then skittishly swung round the other side of the tree.

  ‘If Heaven wills it so, Lady Katherine,’ he agreed, leaning his shoulder against the bark and watching her. ‘But, by God’s truth, sweet lady, it doesn’t take much to create a grievance. So long as there is a leader, there are always the dissatisfied who will follow, alienated because of a lost court case, or indeed an unkind look or—’

  She should have moved out of arm’s reach for it was wondrous how a man could suddenly forget the hurly-burly of statecraft. His fingers reached out to touch her cheek and with such gentleness drew his thumb along her cheekbone.

  ‘Katherine,’ he began.

  Someone coughed.

  He turned his head and beheld Eleanor standing up on the path. It took only an instant for his slack-jawed look to vanish. ‘Devil take it, madame!’ he cursed, swinging away from Kate.

  ‘It’s only my maidservant.’

  ‘Really?’ This was a lord chamberlain suddenly on his high horse. ‘She reminds me of your brother George at his most sanctimonious. And why is she watching me as though I am about to throw you on your back? Is the Lord Chamberlain and Master of the Coinage deemed untrustworthy with anyone in skirts?’ He was so thoroughly indignant that Kate seeing the humour of it all could not resist stirring him further.

  ‘Well, you do have a reputation, my lord,’ she pointed out demurely.