A Court Affair (46 page)

Only my stepbrother, John Appleyard, thought I was a proper wife, obedient to my husband’s will, never forgetting my place or trying to put my own wants before my husband’s, “a model of subserviency,
exactly
as a wife should be,” he said of me, but then Robert always gave him money and cast-off finery and introduced him to influential people at court and had even seen to his appointment as High Sheriff of Norfolk. John prided himself on being one of Robert’s followers and would
never
say anything against or contradict him. It might be crude and vulgar phrasing, but as the plainspoken country folk would say, John acted as if Robert’s shit didn’t stink. And that’s the truth of it. Robert could have flayed my back open with his riding crop and turned me out in my shift and bare feet like Patient Griselda, and John wouldn’t have uttered a word against it, only nodded his head and agreed that it was a just and fitting punishment. Robert knows how to buy loyalty—when charm alone fails, there are always gifts, money, lands, and titles—and Robert could buy John’s soul for a cast-off pink brocade doublet, he’s
so
eager to ingratiate himself with the right people.

Like a cat’s claws, the written words of Anna and Frances kept tearing at my mind. And within me the resentment, like the cancer in my breast, kept growing and festering, giving me no rest. Until finally, after too many restless, sleepless nights and befuddled, dark-shadowed-eyed days, I could endure it no longer. I called up all the courage I could muster and ordered Pirto to pack a trunk for me and arrange for a coach. “To London I will go!” I declared. And when she tried to dissuade me, I stamped my foot and shrieked, “Damn the roads, and damn the weather, damn the risks, and damn this cancer—I am going to London to see my husband, and
nothing
shall stop me!” Though I had my concerns about Richard Verney, I kept them to myself and carefully timed my departure to coincide with a time when I knew he would be absent on some business for my husband, though I never quite understood exactly what it was he did for Robert. I only wished Robert would dismiss him, for that dark, sinister, perpetually black-clad figure had become the lead actor treading the boards of my nightmares. It scared me so to look at his hands, I always tried not to, but my eyes seemed drawn to them. I often dreamed of those hands around my neck. I would see myself lying on the floor, my skirts like a spreading puddle of blood at his feet, and I would jar the whole house awake with my screams.

One night I even bolted from my bed in terror and ran mindlessly, blindly out into the Long Gallery and crashed right into a suit of armour. I ran right into its open metal arms and slammed full force against its cold, hard, steel chest, and we fell together with a fearsome clang, with me screaming, striking out with my fists in a frenzy to fight off my imagined assailant, my would-be murderer. The servants and Sir Richard Verney found me in a tangle of steel armour, white night shift, and wild golden hair, with my fists, arms, feet, and legs all bloody from the fall and bashing at the armour. I had also split my forehead open, and there was blood dripping into my eyes, and I was sobbing from both the pain and the terror. And, to my great shame, in my terror I had lost control of my bladder, and my bare feet slipped in the yellow puddle I had left on the cold stone floor.

Without uttering a single word, Sir Richard Verney reached down and jerked me to my feet. My toes caught in the hem of my shift, and it ripped. With a terrified scream, I turned on him, my fear-addled brain taking him for another assailant who had been lurking in the shadows, striking out with flailing fists and kicking feet, but he simply drew back his hand and wordlessly slapped me hard across the face. Then a bucket of cold water struck me hard, thrown by one of the servants, to shock me back to my senses. Then Richard Verney and his servants returned grumbling to their beds, leaving me sobbing and shivering hard, with my teeth chattering, my torn shift plastered to my body, showing every curve most immodestly. Pirto helped me back to my room, washed and dried me, salved and bandaged my wounds, put me into a clean shift, and bundled me back into bed.

“I’m going mad!”
I sobbed as I lay there with Pirto clucking over me, trying to calm and quiet me. “It’s this place, I tell you—it’s driving me mad! It will be the death of me, I tell you—I
know
it will! It will steal my sanity, and then it will take my life! But by then it will be too late! No one will believe! They will think, poor, deluded woman, she did this to herself!
Please,
God, help me, deliver me from my desperation! Don’t let them do this to me!
Please,
don’t let them!”

To save my sanity, I felt I had no choice but to brave London and risk Robert’s anger, to see him again and plead my case, face-to-face, as I had lost the chance to do when I made a fool of myself in my mermaid gown. My wiles had failed to win back his love and reawaken his desire, and he had left before I could broach the subject of a different, more pleasant abode. So now I must venture out, wearing no disguise, and just be plain, ordinary, everyday me and hope my words, fears, and feelings would be enough to sway him. I must convince him that Compton Verney would be the
death
of me. Perhaps, when he saw how pale and haggard I was, and the dark shadows shrouding my eyes, he would realise that it was not my imagination after all.
Have mercy upon me, Robert!
was my silent prayer, repeated over and over again, like a rosary, as the wheels of the coach turned, bearing me ever closer to London.

Suddenly the wheels ground to a halt, and Pirto and I were flung violently forward. As I struggled to right myself, a face appeared at the window, and I screamed. It was a death’s-head, a bone-white skull, crowned by a jaunty, red-feathered hat, staring in at me. A powerful, red-gloved hand shot out and wrenched open the door and dragged me out, struggling and screaming, pleading for my life, and near fainting with pain when his arm squeezed my afflicted breast. When Pirto tried to help me, the opposite door flew open, and other hands reached out to restrain her. “You shut yer ’ole, or else I’ll shut it fer you!” a voice growled, and Pirto’s protests immediately subsided into meek little whimpers like a frightened kitten’s.

My skull-faced assailant hurled me to the ground, so hard, the breath was knocked out of me, and I could only lie there stunned, gasping for air, my eyes wide with terror, as his dagger ripped my bodice open, cut through my stays and shift, and laid bare my breasts with the point just a hairsbreadth away from cutting my skin. Shame flooded me then, piercing through the terror, as his eyes fell upon the stained white linen bandage that covered my left breast. Sometimes the stinking, blood-tinged discharge seeped through to stain it. I
hated
the sight and smell of it, and it shamed me to the core to have anyone else see. I had always prided myself on being so clean, and now this stink that no perfume could ever entirely mask hung always about me, leaking from my once beautiful pink and white breast that had now become an ugly, distorted, sore, red, and mottled grotesquerie. Tears filled my eyes, and I turned my face away.

But my attacker showed me no mercy, straddling me, pinning me down between his strong thighs. He tore off the bandage, and I cowered beneath him in shame, turning my face away, squeezing my eyes shut tightly and tucking my chin into my shoulder. Even if he meant to rape or murder me, I did not want to see the disgust on his face and in his eyes.

“Mon Dieu!”
he gasped, and there was something in his voice that made me tentatively turn my head and slowly open my eyes and look at him.

The death’s-head mask, that ghoulish, grinning skull, was now hanging about his neck, and I saw beneath the wide red hat brim that my attacker was a very handsome, dark-haired man with sun-bronzed skin and a dashing moustache that curled up at the ends. To my astonishment, his dark eyes were full of tears, and as I watched, they began trickling down his cheeks. By his voice, I guessed he was French, for he gathered me up in his arms, tenderly cradling me against his chest, and kept mumbling something that sounded like “my
pauvre petite
”, as he rocked me and stroked my hair and pressed kiss after kiss onto my brow. I also thought I heard the name
Marguerite
murmured in a tear-choked whisper. Then, just as suddenly, he stopped, and in a voice that demanded instant obedience, addressed his men, ordering them to stand down and cease their assault on us, return anything they had taken, and mount their horses and wait for him.

“It’s all right, don’t be afraid, I will not harm you,” he said softly in his rich, velvety voice. As he spoke, he untied his red velvet cloak and wrapped it around me. And then he lifted me, oh, so gently, as if he were afraid I might break, and carried me back to the coach and put me back inside just as he had found me.

He settled me against the cushions and adjusted his cloak about me, drawing its folds closer, like a warm red velvet cocoon. Then he reached inside his shirt and took from about his neck what looked to be a miniature painted on ivory in a gold filigree frame dangling from a delicate gold and pearl chain. He pressed it to his lips, then, after one long, last look at it, draped it over my head and settled it round my neck, so that it lay over my diseased breast.

“This is
Sainte-Agathe
—St Agatha—she belonged to someone who was
very,
very
dear to me. I loved her with all my heart—she
was
my heart—but … I lost her.” He paused to swallow down his tears. “Women with your malady sometimes find comfort in praying to
Sainte-Agathe.
Please, you pray to her too, and I will pray that she will work a miracle for you.”

I looked down at the painting and saw that it was of a lovely young woman with a halo about her golden hair and a beautiful smile upon her serene face. She was robed in red and white accented with gold, and in her hands she held a tray upon which lay what I, at first glance, thought were two cherry-topped cakes before I realised that they were actually her breasts, which had been cut off when she was tortured to try to force her to forsake her Christian faith.

“Thank you,” I whispered. I was still shaking so hard, my voice trembled.

He reached out and stroked my face. “What is your name?” he asked.

“Amy,” I answered.

“Ah!” His face broke into a smile. “
Aimee
—
beloved!
It suits you well; such a name is
always
given from the heart by one who
knows
they have just received the
greatest
gift of all.”

Then he leaned forward, pressed the most tender, lingering kiss I had ever received onto my brow, murmured some French words, which I just
knew
to be the most heartfelt blessing, and then he was gone, calling to his men, and I heard horses galloping away.

The coachman spared not a moment and cracked the whip, and the coach lurched forward, and we were on our way again. Through the open window I heard the coachman say in an awed voice to the man on the box beside him that we had just met Red Jack,
Jacques Rouge,
Bloody Jack, and by some miracle survived the encounter without so much as a scratch—“not a drop o’ blood spilt, a skirt lifted, or a purse pilfered! God was watchin’ out for us this day, ’e was!” he declared, cracking his whip and urging the horses to go faster. “I don’t care if it rattles e’ery tooth in me ’ead loose, we’ll see London before nightfall!” he vowed, cracking the whip again.

Once in London, I did not want to face my cousins in Camberwell. I knew they would have heard all the gossip about Robert and the Queen and would—whether they regarded me with pity or contempt—have much to say that would make me feel as if I were tied and bound and being spun round and roasted upon a spit, so I bade the coachman take me to a reputable inn instead. There I fell exhausted into bed and slept for two days straight. I didn’t wake up until well past noon of the third, when a beam of sunlight, like a prodding, poking finger, penetrated a crack in the bed-curtains and made me stir myself.

As I halfheartedly pecked at a roll and sipped my breakfast ale, I lay back, near tears, against the pillows Pirto piled behind my back as I listened to the serving woman who had come in to tidy the room chatter on about the latest gossip from the court.

“Word ’as it that Lord Robert ’as given the Queen a fine, quilted red petticoat to ’ide the child they ’ave been a-makin’. And,” she added, pausing to give me a nod and a knowing look, “I ’ave it direct from a groom at the palace that the Queen
never
goes on ’er Summer Progress but to be delivered. Some say she’s ’ad
five
children by Lord Robert, the first bein’ a bastard made when they was in the Tower t’get’er—’tis as good a way to pass the time as any, I trow, them both bein’ prisoners an’ not knowing if they was to live or die—but
I
think ’tis more like two, or per’aps three. ’Tis a right pity too, for I ’ear tell that ’e ’as a very beautiful wife waitin’ at ’ome, pinin’ fer ’im, but ’e doesn’t live with ’er and visits ’er but seldom. Rumour ’as it that ’e ’as sent to poison ’er so ’e will be free to marry the Queen. May God preserve Our Gracious Majesty! ’E’s a cad, Lord Robert is. ’Andsome is as ’andsome does, I always say, an’ any man what would murder ’is wife to marry ’is mistress, even if she is Queen o’ England, ’tis no man I want to share my bed an’ board with! But bein’ a queen doesn’t save a woman from bein’ a fool o’er a man; they say she ne’er lets ’im leave ’er an’ visits ’im in ’is chambers day and night—right next to ’ers with a door connectin’, they are. I saw the Queen once, I did.” She patted her chest and nodded proudly, beaming wide to show the blackened stumps of her teeth. “Ridin’ by on ’er coronation day. I ran out an’ offered ’er a sprig o’ rosemary, I did, an’ she took it from me with ’er own white ’and an’ tucked it inside the Bible she was ’oldin’ on ’er lap an’ thanked me right kindly for it an’ said she would keep it forever to remind ’er of ‘this
glorious
day’! Now, that’s
true
majesty, it is, an’ if it ain’t, I don’t know what is!”