The Queen's Lady (3 page)

Jane pulled a wry face: this was the problem of having so good a friend – they did not forget your confidences even when you wished they would. She’d poured out her miserable heart to Milly letter by letter when imprisoned in her family home, every last humiliating detail of her failed betrothal. The charming, teasing James, brother of the earl, represented all that she had loved and lost and she had spent rather too many letters recounting her fascination with him. ‘Well, James Lacey was never going to be for me, was he? I threw over his brother in a very cruel way – or so it would seem to the family.’

‘Even though you did it for Lady Ellie’s sake?’

‘Neither James nor the earl knows that. I hoped that his countess might guess, but we’ve not seen each other since she married him.’

Milly brushed some mud from the hem of her friend’s petticoats absent-mindedly. ‘So Lady Ellie does not understand what you did for her? I’ve not met her but she sounds from your account a very kind person. Why not write to her?’

Jane shrugged. ‘At first it was too awkward – then too much time passed.’

‘You’ll meet them now you are at court, surely? Have a chance to restore your friendship?’

‘Maybe, but the Dorsets aren’t rich – they won’t be able to afford to attend frequently. Our paths may not cross for some years.’ Jane mourned her fractured friendship with Ellie almost as much as she missed seeing James. ‘Oh, but that’s too gloomy for this day. Let’s not talk about me – I’m sure I’ve written it all – the horrid sons, the grim few months I spent after Jonas’s death – all very predictable and ugly. Tell me about yourself. How fares your business?’

Milly gave her a smug look. ‘Well now, as you are my main investor, I should report that I’m turning a decent profit thanks to your patronage and the ladies you have sent my way. I have two girls in my workroom and Henny to mind the shop so I am quite the woman of business. And I have Old Uriah to defend my doors on your late husband’s insistence.’ Milly grinned at her friend, seeming very young to have such responsibilities. She was sweet-looking rather than classically beautiful with lively hazel eyes and silky auburn hair, though that was currently hidden by her modest coif. Jane did not doubt she would have attracted more than her share of admirers among her neighbours and would be regarded a good marriage prospect.

‘And the tailors you work for take you seriously? Jonas was worried that you would struggle to get good terms being so new …’

‘And so female,’ finished Milly. ‘Aye, I’ve had my share of problems. Most of them do not know if they should flirt with me or dismiss me as witless cotton-fluff.’

‘The fiends!’ laughed Jane.

‘Fortunately, one of my workers is the daughter of a merchant-draper. He helps me when I need a man to intervene or run into difficulties with the Company of Tailors. Most of my work is with my neighbour, Master Rich, and he says he is happy with our collaboration.’

‘Not to mention that he is a man without any urge to flirt – not with our sex at least.’

‘Shhh! I know the court has lax ideas about such things, but round here you must not mention it. He’s a dear and I don’t want to get him into trouble. Where was I? Oh yes: the marquess’s man of business – he holds the lease on my behalf, so really I have little to worry about on that score. I’d say that most of the tailors in Cheapside now welcome my finishing services as I am known to refer new customers on to them.’

Jane was relieved to hear this news. It was almost impossible for a woman to set up in business; only the protection of a marquess had made it a reality for Milly, and Jane had worried that his death would be felt badly by her protégée. But they were not out of the woods yet.

‘I hope Master Rochester continues to follow Jonas’s instructions. My stepson, the new marquess, may not notice this little detail in the Rievaulx holdings, but if he knew you were my friend he would make trouble just to spite me.’

Milly waved the matter away. ‘I count my blessings each day and try not to worry about the morrow.’

‘And your father?’

Milly huffed a sigh. ‘Some improvement there, praise the Lord. He has been released on condition he serve in the Low Countries campaign as adviser to the Duke of Anjou. If he proves himself loyal, he may be allowed back from exile.’

‘Did you see him before he left?’

Milly shook her head. ‘Nay, it chanced that I was away from town on a commission for Lady Norton when he was sent out. They decided they needed him after the fall of Dunkirk. That disaster proved a blessing as even military gentlemen under a cloud are in demand. They say the war has reached a crisis and the poor Dutch are being crushed.’

Jane had always rather liked Milly’s bluff soldier father, despite the fact that he had been a fool for being talked into his treachery and lucky still to have his head. ‘I wish I could exile my father and bring yours back.’

‘Has your father bothered you since your husband’s death?’

Jane fingered the amber beads on her doublet, a nervous habit she wished she could conquer. ‘No, but it’s only a matter of time. He will seek me out either to make use of me or remind me of my failings – he can’t resist the chance to bully someone.’

Milly picked up a piece of bone-work trimming from her workbasket and threaded a needle. Jane liked the sign that Milly had forgotten her guest’s new, exalted rank and was behaving again as she once would have done on any previous cosy gossip.

‘I think, my dear Jane, you need to marry again. Find yourself a strong gentleman to protect you from your family – not a fatherly old lord this time, but a lusty young lover.’

Jane tried in vain to dismiss the image of James as she had last seen him – an imposing figure in his favourite blue doublet and hose, dark eyes and brown hair, effortlessly charming and capable. But then, she reminded herself, she had also been attracted to Ralegh’s handsome appearance at first, and look where that had led her.

‘I’m not sure my judgement is all that it should be in matters of love,’ she admitted. ‘The one lover I’ve known turned out to be a great disappointment.’

Milly pricked the cloth, a frown wrinkling her forehead. ‘Well, Master Walter Ralegh may look very fine but he has no heart. You deserve much, much better – and, they say, once bitten, twice shy.’

‘Meaning I’ve learnt from my mistake?’

‘Mmm-hmm.’ Milly held pins in her mouth as she fixed the bone work to the neck of a gown.

‘And what about you?’ probed Jane, leaning forward. ‘Any suitors after that pretty new seamstress?’

Milly smiled and stuck the last pin in place. ‘Maybe.’

‘Oh, don’t be coy – tell me!’

‘There’s the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker …’

Jane threw herself back in the chair and laughed. ‘Oh, you tease! I thought you were being serious!’

Milly grimaced. ‘Maybe I am for, sadly, none of them make my heart go pit-a-pat.’

Jane glanced out of the window. In February, night came early and she had to go if she was to return to her lodgings at a decent hour. ‘And thus far none of the fine gentlemen at court have made my pulse race. We are a sorry pair, are we not?’

‘I blame the men: either they are all show and no substance, or all substance and no show.’ Milly waggled the trimming suggestive of a disappointing encounter.

Jane snorted with laughter. ‘My dear friend, you are quite vulgar.’

‘My dear Marchioness, you are quite right.’

*

Standing at the upper casement, Milly watched Jane depart in her litter until it turned the corner and went out of sight. With a sigh, she returned to her chair, playing with the bead bracelet she always wore, finding it an aid to thought and a holder of memories. She was so pleased for Jane – she deserved her chance of happiness at court, free of her wolfish family. If the truth be told, Milly liked Jane even more now than when they had shared a schoolroom. At ten, Jane had a streak of her father’s hardness and not a small dose of vanity about her beauty; the events of the past few years – being thrown over by Ralegh and suffering disgrace for her choices – had softened that brittle shell and added an attractive dash of humility. Milly was touched that Jane, now an exalted marchioness and lady-in-waiting to the Queen, still wanted her friendship; indeed, she seemed more anxious to maintain it than ever before. Perhaps that was a result of losing Jonas and realizing how alone in the world she could be without friends around her.

‘Hey-ho, Milly-o!’ A voice from the street broke in upon her reverie.

‘Master Turner!’ Milly saw the player approaching from the direction of the theatre north of the city walls, his scarlet cloak as loud as a trumpet blast.

‘How is my fairest flower of the Cheap?’ Christopher Turner stopped below her window and swept off his hat in a flourishing bow.

Milly laughed. ‘I am well, sir. Have you come for the king’s robe?’

Christopher clapped his hand to his chest. ‘You wound me, lady. I came to gaze upon the picture of fair Persephone framed by her casement, the maiden of the needle, who brings spring early to our sad city.’

‘Come on in, you rogue. I know you are only here to carry the costumes for your master.’

With a theatrical groan as if mortally struck in the heart, Christopher staggered through the door to repeat his performance for Henny. Milly took her time going down the stairs to allow Henny her fun, not in the least offended that to the young player every girl was a Penelope, a Helen of Troy or a Venus. He could no more keep hold of his poetic utterances in the presence of a maiden than the tide could be stopped from turning.

‘So, my turtle dove, my honey bee, have you re-trimmed the cloak as required?’ Christopher asked as she descended to the shop. A vital presence, nearly six feet and blessed with curly black hair, he filled the room, making it his stage. Poor Henny and the doorman were quite cast in his shade. But while Milly had a very soft spot for Christopher, she knew better than to cast her affections away on him, as that was the path too many girls had trodden to heartbreak.

She returned his compliments in the same coin. ‘But of course, my crowing cockerel, my glow-worm, I’ve done my very best.’ Milly plucked a package from the shelf and shook it out to show him the new gold fringe and fur collar. ‘I have refurbished the fastenings so that they are almost as fine as when its first owner wore it at court.’

‘Oh, lackaday, who can sing the sad tale of the cloak that once sat on my Lord Leicester’s shoulders, attracting the sovereign’s favour, now to bear the hoots and scorn of the groundlings on a player’s back?’ Christopher struck a tragic pose, cradling the cloak in his arms like a dying heroine.

‘If someone’s to tell the tale, I would’ve thought it should be you.’

He handed the garment back to her. ‘Aye, I know all about being a noble cast-off.’

Milly kicked herself for her misstep – she had not meant to offend but he had taken her comment as a reflection on his birth. It was an open secret among Christopher’s friends that he was the illegitimate offspring of the last Earl of Dorset and his mistress, Judith Turner; the bastard son had been haphazardly supported during the earl’s life and cut off from the family since his negligent father’s demise. That made him half-brother to the James that Jane loved – not something Milly had thought wise to reveal to either friend, as they were worlds apart.

Having no wish to dwell on a painful subject, Milly turned the direction of the conversation as deftly as she turned a seam. ‘Master Turner, I beg of you to tell your master to die with more discretion – less rolling about on the boards, please. I can only patch, not produce miracles.’

Dark thoughts passing swiftly, Christopher waggled his coal-black eyebrows at her as he leapt at the new opening for a well-fashioned compliment. ‘Ah, but every breath you take is a miracle, dear one, sweetening the very air with the perfumes of Arabia.’

Milly swatted his arm. ‘Too much, Kit.’

He stood back and scratched his chin. ‘You think so? All right – I will strike that out of my sonnet.’

‘You’re writing sonnets?’

He nodded. ‘Fourteen lines for seven shillings. Twenty-eight lines for ten – quite a bargain if you are a prosaic baron courting some pretty noblewoman.’

‘Oh, in that case, perhaps it will pass – Arabian perfumes are fine enough for a knight.’

He took out his notebook and snatched a quill from the table. ‘No, no, I will be guided by the lady’s taste. I get a bonus if these sonnets secure her hand in marriage.’ He scratched out the offending words.

Milly peered over his shoulder at the correction. ‘Poor thing, she will be mightily disenchanted after the wedding to find her romantic songbird a plain old duck.’

Turner caught her hand and kissed her fingers. ‘But that is marriage, my love, mutual disillusionment.’

She pulled her hand free. ‘Go to, you devil. I’ll listen to none of your cynical speeches today. I still hope for a husband and happiness.’

He laughed. ‘Settle for one or the other, sweet – that way you will not be disappointed.’

2

Lacey Hall, Berkshire

The Earl of Dorset had an heir – an heir who at a week old was bawling red-faced as the priest doused him with tepid water at the font in Stoke-by-Lacey church. James pitied his little nephew, fretting in his baptismal whites, eyes screwed shut against a cruel world that had taken him from his cradle to this cold stony place and then had the nerve to get him soaked. James also pitied him because, in addition to his sister, Catherine, and her husband, Sir Gilbert Huntsford, the poor scrap had got him as a godfather. A raw deal when this particular sponsor barely knew if God existed any more.

James had tried to put his older brother off the idea of asking him to stand for the boy, but Will had been insistent.

‘You wouldn’t want him to have to rely on Tobias now, would you?’ Will jested, having just finished telling James how he had had to placate their youngest brother’s Cambridge tutor who was threatening to send the boy down for numerous infractions of the rules.

James privately thought the baby would do better with sunny-natured Tobias as a godfather, but dared not add to his manifold shortcomings by hurting Will and Ellie with a refusal.

‘Just so as you understand what you’re getting, Will,’ he had warned.

‘I know exactly what he’s getting,’ Will replied warmly, throwing an arm round his brother’s shoulders. ‘A good man for a godfather.’

James knew he was no longer a good man – if he ever had been – but had agreed so as not to cast a shadow over what should be a perfect day. Will’s joy was a pleasure to see – he deserved it. The earl had a wife he loved more than life itself, and now a child to pass on his title. James did not mind being knocked off his perch as his brother’s heir – indeed had expected it ever since Will married Ellie – but it did rub in the fact that he was no longer needed at Lacey Hall. With her usual foresight, their mother had already realized this and moved out to the dower house, taking their little sister, Sarah, with her, despite Will and Ellie’s earnest protests that they should both stay. The earl and his countess did not intend to make other members of the family feel unwelcome but they were so in love with each other it made bachelors like James feel surplus to requirements. He now wished he had arranged some employment before returning home, something to take him away and give him a purpose in life. As long as he did not have to return to the war in the Low Countries – he did not think his sanity could bear another taste of Spain’s war on its Dutch subjects.

The family walked the short distance back to Lacey Hall. The proud mother had not attended, still confined to bed for her month’s lying in. The dowager countess whisked the child from the earl’s arms and led the retreat of the married ladies as they trooped upstairs to join Ellie for the celebration in her bedchamber. This left James in charge of Sarah.

‘Why can’t I go upstairs, Jamie?’ Sarah begged for what felt like the hundredth time, swinging on his arm as he towed her into the family parlour.

James, never the world’s most patient brother, was feeling itchy in his skin, as if his shirt had been impregnated with some vile poison. The Stoke-by-Lacey children had been skating on the pond when the baptism party had passed through the village, their screams so like the cries of the victims of the massacre he’d witnessed from the edge of the woods that he had had trouble remembering where he was.
He’d had to stand and watch them fall, powerless to save even a single life.

James shook himself, bringing his attention back to the present with difficulty. ‘You know why you can’t, midget. The ladies talk about things not suited to a maiden’s ears.’

‘Exactly! They get to hear all the exciting gossip and I’m left with my boring old brothers. I don’t even get to watch Ellie feed Wilkins. Please, I’m almost grown up now; can I go upstairs?’

‘No, now hush!’
Those cries, cut off so suddenly. God in heaven, what a waste.

‘It’s not fair!’

‘Be quiet!’

‘But, Jamie –’

Desperate to escape, James swung round, raising his hand. ‘I said “no”! Dammit, Sarah, can’t you take no for an answer!’ He glared at her, only to find her looking in open-mouthed horror at his bunched fist. The room had fallen silent as all the men gathered there from his older brother to Vicar Bagley broke off their conversations to see what passed at the entrance.

‘Jamie?’ whispered Sarah, her bottom lip trembling.

With a struggle, James unclenched his fist, disgusted at himself. He had never raised a hand against his sister in a temper and he had no idea from where the sudden gust of violence had sprung.

‘I said “no”,’ he repeated, moving back from her. He wished he could step away so easily from himself. ‘Pray excuse me.’ He gave the watching company a cursory bow then quit the celebration. He couldn’t stomach making polite conversation when his brain felt like a keg of gunpowder on the point of combustion.

Striding from the house, he made for the stable where Diego intercepted him.

‘Your horse, my lord?’

‘Why else would I be here?’ James kicked the trough while his servant saddled Tartarus.

‘I come with you?’ asked Diego as he led the gelding out.

‘No. Stay. I’m not fit company for anyone.’ James swung into the saddle and kicked the horse into a gallop, attempting to outrun himself as he fled across the meadows.

A frown knotting his brow, Diego watched his master streak off until he was lost in the mist rising from the river, cloak flapping behind him like wings. James had not been himself since their mission near Dunkirk; the ugly scenes they had seen in that devastated village had snapped something inside him. He was not sleeping – or when he did finally manage to drop off, his sleep was plagued by nightmares. More than once James had actually stabbed the mattress with the dagger he kept under his pillow. Diego hid it when he could, fearing James would do himself an injury one night, but his master always demanded its return, saying he did not feel safe without it close by.

Diego straightened a tattered saddle blanket claimed by the stable yard dog as a bed. James had kicked it over in passing, but Diego doubted he had noticed; so sunk in his gloom, he had stopped caring about his effect on others – a notable change for one who had been loved for his good humour and interest in the world around him.

The mongrel whined his thanks, licking Diego’s hand.

‘Hey, boy, he is gone; no need to be afraid.’

For all his soothing words to the dog, Diego had to admit he was scared. He feared that his lord was troubled by a haunt, uncanny creatures the elders of his village in Africa used to speak of in hushed tones as even to utter their names was to invite their attention. James must have picked up the spirit of one of the people in that massacre who had not been laid to rest as was seemly; he would not heal until he was freed of it. Diego credited his own escape to the bead talisman he wore round his neck – he wished he’d thought to protect his master with one. Perhaps it still was not too late?

Diego took up his pitchfork and returned to mucking out Tartarus’s stall, talking in his own tongue to Barbary, the earl’s favourite mount, housed in the neighbouring enclosure. He confided more to the horses than he did to any person. He told the stallion about the horrific mission in the Low Countries. He went on to his own nightmares of his early years – being taken from his homeland and passed from hand to hand as a servant, from Turk to Venetian, from Venetian to Spaniard and lastly to an Englishman. That gentleman, one Silas Porter, had been thrown in the Tower for treason and Diego had ended up with the Laceys. Diego admitted to Barbary that, fond though he was of his current family, he had never truly been touched by the suffering of these strange people in the north – their ways were alien to him, their cruelties so flagrant. He pitied the Dutch children though. No child of any nation should be cut to pieces on the whim of some distant overlord.

Barbary agreed with a snort.

‘Diego?’ The earl had come in search of his brother. The two oldest Laceys were a contrast of light and dark – the earl blond to his brother’s chestnut colouring – but they were clearly devoted to each other.

‘My lord?’ Diego propped his fork against the wall and ducked out of the stall.

‘My brother’s gone?’

‘Indeed he has, O most worshipful lord.’ Diego wasn’t really feeling up to his usual jesting overuse of titles for the earl, but he felt he should make the attempt on his lordship’s special day.

‘Was he … was he quite himself?’

No, he was not. That was as plain as the nose on Dame Holton’s face, which was the largest in the village. ‘He required some time apart, my lord.’

The earl pulled off his velvet hat and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘What happened to him, Diego?’

‘My lord?’

‘In the Low Countries. He’s been different since he came back. Before he left, he was all fire and brimstone, eager for the adventure, for the military life; now he is … he’s sad, is he not?’

‘Aye, my lord.’

‘So what happened?’

Diego found himself in an awkward position. If James had not confided in his brother, was it his servant’s place to do it for him?

‘Please, Diego, I only ask because I care for his welfare.’ The dog nudged his master’s hand and the earl scratched him behind the ears. The casual affectionate gesture swung Diego in his favour.

‘It was not what happened to us, my lord, but what we witnessed that troubles Master James,’ Diego finally admitted. ‘Your brother suffers because he could not stop the slaughter. It haunts him.’

‘And so it would. He was ever one to rush to the defence of another.’ The earl tapped his fingers restlessly on the stall only to have his stallion, Barbary, lip his knuckles. He stroked the horse’s nose, finding it easier to have this conversation when not meeting Diego’s eyes. ‘Do you have any idea what would cure him of his melancholy?’

Diego frowned: he did not understand this talk of humours and melancholy so beloved by the learned men of this country; he believed James’s problem belonged to the spirit world. But perhaps the cure was the same?

‘You should give him something to do, sir. He needs a task to take him beyond the reach of his haunt. Wise men say that passage over water is said to lose them. The English Channel did not prove far enough.’

The earl had grown accustomed to his groom’s way of seeing the world and sorted through the talk of haunts to the essential advice. ‘A long voyage?’

‘Aye, my lord. To a land where the haunt would not dare travel.’

The earl stood up straighter, his burden of worry lightened. ‘How strange you should mention that; I have an interest in such an enterprise.’ He closed his eyes, consulting his god, then smiled. ‘Yes, I think perhaps this is the Lord’s will. Pack your bags, Diego, I believe you are headed to the New World.’

Diego’s jaw dropped: he had not intended to leave Lacey Hall again so soon. There was a village girl or two he had been courting. ‘Me, sir?’

‘Naturally. How else will James lose his haunt if you do not go with him to chase it away?’

Diego wanted to protest that he hated sea travel, having had his fill by his twelfth year when he arrived in England, but what was the use? His role in life, it appeared, was to obey. ‘Aye, my lord. I will ready myself for the voyage.’

But not without making a few prayers to his own gods.

‘Ralegh’s planning what?’

On his return from his punishing ride, James had been cornered in the study by his brother and their sister’s husband, Sir Gilbert Huntsford. Will had blocked his attempt to raid the wine while Gil had wrestled him into a chair. Now he was forced to listen to them both with a clear head.

A long-standing friend of the earl, Gil was a dependable man in his early twenties. No-nonsense brown hair cut short, neat moustache, kind eyes, he suited their practical sister Catherine to the ground, and James suspected the arranged marriage had rapidly become a love match, despite the sadness that so far they were yet to have a child survive infancy. Gil was the last person one would expect to be interested in Ralegh’s dream of settling a strange land on the merest thread of hope that they might strike gold.

‘Ralegh’s idea is not so wild as it may sound,’ Gil explained patiently, his voice a rich bass to go with his broad-chested frame.

‘If I’m going to listen to this, at least give me a drink,’ James groaned.

Will showed mercy and thrust a glass of white wine into his hand, then poured two more, for Gil and himself.

Gil seated himself in a chair opposite. ‘Ralegh plans to establish a colony on the coast of America where the land has not yet been claimed by a Christian prince.’

James sipped, barely noticing the taste. ‘I thought that had been tried. Did not his half-brother die in the attempt to find riches there but last year?’

‘Aye, ’tis true that many have wrecked their fortunes that way, but I am convinced that soon, one day, we will succeed.’

‘The accounts of that land are marvellous,’ Will added. ‘And look how Spain fills her coffers each year with gold and silver from Peru.’

‘That is so,’ agreed Gil. ‘If God lets the devil Philip have such an empire, why not our Queen?’

James couldn’t stir himself to feel excited by the venture. To be sure, a few years back, like the rest of the nation, he had lapped up the tales of Sir Francis Drake’s momentous circumnavigation of the world and the riches he had plundered in the Americas. For a time, it had been every boy’s dream to go pirating for Her Majesty across the Atlantic and Drake was venerated as their patron saint. But now James had no spirit left to pretend to care.

‘I really believe this plan by Ralegh has a chance, Jamie,’ Will continued. ‘You know he and I do not like each other much –’

James snorted. That was an understatement: every time the pair met on the jousting field, they tried to beat the stuffing out of each other.

‘Even so, I have been impressed by his careful preparations and am of a mind to invest in the scheme.’

James put his glass down with a rap on the little oak table. ‘You are thinking of handing over some of your money to him? You must either be sickening for something or be serious about this.’