The Devil in Ermine Read online

  ‘And do we delay the coronation?’ he was asking.

  ‘The embroiderers’ guild will be sticking pins in wax images if we do,’ I retorted dryly.

  Richard grabbed the reins of the meeting once more. ‘All in good time, Jock. I pray you all listen to the bishop’s evidence first. For my part, I cannot sit through this again.’ He stood up and we all rose to our feet. ‘Dick, come with me now and I shall sign the letter,’ and with Ratcliffe reluctantly whistled to heel, he left us.

  ’I wonder how long this will take,’ muttered Howard. ‘Is it true, I wonder?’

  I pulled a wry face as I rose to let Stillington in. ‘My lords, to put it in a nutshell, what matters is not whether the bishop’s tale be true or false but what we make of it.’

  I HAD invited guests for dinner next day, but Pershall drew me aside before I entered the great hall to greet them.

  ‘Your strumpet’s back, your grace.’

  I smiled through clenched teeth. ‘Call her a strumpet, dear Pershall, and I’ll whistle in every stinking dog in London for you to lather.’

  ‘Very well, the virtuous lady that slept in your bed all night.’

  ‘Hmm, I hope no one saw her come in.’

  ‘No, my lord. I put it about that she was my doxy like you requested. In fact they believe that she granted me favours on your bed.’

  ‘I’ll strangle you later,’ I murmured sweetly, cursing that instead of making love, I must welcome Mayor Shaa Alderman Billesdon, Master John Russhe and several other merchants – all worth cultivating.

  Poor Meg! There would be no way I could excuse myself from the table for several hours.

  OF COURSE, she was irritable at waiting so long. She thrust her chin high at me the moment I entered my bedchamber.

  ‘I'll not play the whore to you again,’ she hissed, her veil bobbing with anger upon its precarious wires. ‘How dare you send me this!’ and she flung at me the necklet that Bannaster had delivered to her lodgings on my orders. ‘What was I supposed to do with it? Wear it when my husband comes home? Pawn it like a whore? Do you think I have no honour?’

  I laughed at her fierceness and dropped the offending trinket into the purse on my belt.

  Such irony. I might have thought myself a kingmaker but here was fiery Meg, waiting to carpet me like a disgruntled wife.

  She stood glaring at me with knuckles on her hips and tendrils of hair escaping from her satin cap. ‘Did you think I lay with you only to coax you into freeing my father?’ There was no ‘my lord’ or ‘your grace’ in her conversation.

  ‘Did you?’ I teased tritely, although I dreaded her answer.

  ‘Ha!’ she scoffed. ‘You took advantage of my distress and I’m to be paid off. Go and find a queue of virgins to deflower. I hope the pox gets you and the moths eat your ermine and if you don’t stop blocking my way, I shall resort to what my mother taught me.’

  No woman had ever made me laugh so much. I reeled back against the door.

  ‘You are wonderful,’ I exclaimed. ‘Worth at least a golden necklace.’ I was ready for her fist as it shot out from her side and caught her hand. ‘There is something I have to say to you,’ I whispered, drawing her with me towards the cushioned window recess, ‘and I want you to calm yourself and listen.’ Something in the seriousness of my expression exacted her grudging obedience. I tugged her onto my lap.

  ‘I will be honest with you,’ I stroked a finger over her wrist and up the silk of her inner sleeve. ‘I find you delightful company but you are someone else’s wife and I am a man of state, a busy man, so busy that lust, like food and drink, is hastily dealt with.’

  ‘Ha! Either I am obtuse or you are verbose, my lord.’ She struggled to stand up but I held her tight.

  ‘No, sit still and listen. Love, sweet Meg, demands courtesy and gentleness. Love demands time. The contemplation of the beloved…’ I turned her face to me, ‘to the exclusion of all else and I do not have that time. In other words, I am resolved to send you home to your children, ladybird.’

  ‘You are not my keeper.’ Her lips crushed into a pout. ‘’Sides, I am not a bad mother, if that is your game to make me feel so. My babes are well cared for by their nurse and my mother, too. And you forget why I came here.’ She grabbed my chin. ‘I am intent on staying so long as you keep my father a prisoner, else my mother will not forgive me.’

  ‘He is not my prisoner, Meg, and your mother puts too much faith in you. Loathe as I am to lose you, you-must-return-home.’

  ‘Say you so.’ The she gave me an arched look, and clasped her hands to my cheeks. ‘Are you afraid of Gloucester finding out?’

  ‘I am a grown man, sweetheart.’

  And then the minx began her own games, diving her hand between her skirt and my short cote, feeling for my cock, which began to crow and rise upon his perch. She twisted round and undid the flaps of my codpiece to seek him out.

  I groaned with pleasure as I felt her hand ease his comb back and forth.

  ‘I have a meeting with the Hanse merchants at suppertime,’ I gasped.

  ‘How unfortunate,’ she whispered. ‘Then I cannot let you forth in such an unresolved state.’ I was so hard I could have hung my hat upon my member.

  ‘Meg,’ I groaned as she scrambled away from me, but she was only gathering up her skirts to mount me. She pushed me back into the cushions of the daybed and rode me so deliciously that I could only think of her darling cunney encompassing me and when at last I poured my seed into her, it was like heaven on earth.

  She disappeared behind the garderobe corner to cleanse herself and came and mopped me too so there was no spoiling of my hose. ‘There,’ she murmured retying my flap and tugging down my doublet. ‘Go to your meeting.’

  ‘You are a little witch,’ I complained, sitting up, feeling around for my hat.

  ‘If that is so, you, my lord, are my broomstick.’ She found my hat for me. ‘Can you sup here tomorrow?’ Her pretty green eyes both beseeched and promised.

  ‘I am not sure.’ I resisted looking at her further and ran my fingers along my hat brim. ‘The Gloucesters and I are invited to Lambeth Palace. This is what I mean, Meg. This is my work.’ I stood up and she nestled against me, wrapping her arms about my neck and teasing her fingers through my hair .

  ‘Then I shall steal in here before curfew.’

  I could not forbid her though I knew I should. ‘Do so, but be very careful, sweetheart,’ I whispered, undoing the garland of her arms.

  RETURNING next evening, I let my attendants disrobe me before Pershall brought Meg in. I opened my arms to her, lifted her veil and kissed her thoroughly.

  ‘My beautiful love.’ I unclasped her belt and freed her of her gown. We scarcely made it to the bed. Afterwards when I was spent, we lay together between the sheets. For a while, I cradled her head against my shoulder in a husbandly fashion and then she wriggled up and leaned herself upon her elbow, twirling a lock of my hair between her fingers.

  ‘Ha – rry, I…I have been to see my aunt.’

  That sluiced the lethargy from lovemaking clean from my mind. She meant Elizabeth. Jesu! Now she would be on Captain Nesfield’s list. The instant Ratcliffe returned from York there would be questions.

  ‘Did you give your name to the guards?’

  ‘Not my real name, no. Why do you ask?’

  ‘No matter.’ I raised myself on an elbow, too, to read her face the better. ‘So tell me, was there room to sit down among the coffers? You know she’s gotten half of Westminster Palace stuffed in with her?’

  ‘She looked well enough. Pale, of course, from too little sun, and thicker in the hips from want of exercise.’

  ‘Well, that’s no one’s fault but hers. What did she have to say?’

  ‘That Gloucester is a greedy dog and covets the crown, and that you love no one but yourself and hang like a dag upon his arse.’

  ‘Very loquacious of her. And you believe that?’ I ran my hand down the lovely slope of her back and thigh
. ‘As you see, my walls are mirrored with looking glasses.’

  Her cheeks dimpled with laughter, as she glanced at the scarlet tester above us and the tapestry of Lancelot and Guinivere on the wall.

  I smiled. ‘Lady, I need no mirror but your eyes.’ I kissed her with finesse for some time and then I asked, ‘Was Mistress Shore there at the sanctuary?’

  Nothing showed in Meg’s face but beneath my fingertips her body tensed.

  ‘Mistress Shore is a free spirit, Harry. I know naught of her comings and goings.’

  ‘Yes, she flits all over the place. A regular butterfly. I hear she has moved in to comfort Lord Hastings.’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘Naught,’ I finished for her. ‘Never mind, Meg, I’ll not question you further.’

  ‘Is the Duke of Gloucester hungry for the crown?’

  ‘I know—’

  ‘Naught. I suppose I should not ask.’

  ‘No, you should not,’ I said sternly. ‘This bed is free of faction and I’ll not have it defiled with foolish gossip.’

  ‘You are calling the Queen of England a gossip?’

  ‘Why not? If I am “vain”, she can be a gossip! But Westminster Sanctuary is hardly Cheapside. She must feast hungrily on any scraps that visitors feed her. I hope you did not tell her about us.’ She gravely shook her head, thank Heaven. ‘Do you carry messages for her?’

  There was no subterfuge in her face. ‘Oh, I do a few errands. I took her in some Paris thread.’

  ‘So you have been there before?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ She stroked a finger down my chest. ‘Harry, why would she call you “vain”?’

  I rolled on to my back. ‘Oh, because there is not a scrap of liking between us. I was made her ward for a while.’

  ‘But did you not have family of your own?’ I did not answer. She shook me. ‘Har–ry, I am interested.’

  ‘My Grandam Buckingham sold my brother and I as wards to King Edward in order to get her lands back after Grandfather Buckingham’s attainder.’ My lips must have tightened.

  She sensed the hurt stoppered up in my breast. ‘It might be cleansing to tell me more.’

  I stared up at the brocade canopy and remembered being led up to the scarlet and gold canopy in the Painted Chamber at Westminster Palace and the two huge glittering figures awaiting me. The terror and the humiliation. Imagine this giant of a man turning you upside down for sport in front of a creature who seemed all jewels and soaring headdress, except for her eyes; I remember those eyes, eyes like a goshawk’s.

  ‘My younger brother and I were in my Lady of Exeter’s household to begin with, but she was having an affaire de coeur and the King gave me as a ward to the Queen.’ I gave a deep sigh. ‘Let’s leave my past alone, Meg.’

  Stirring those embers gave off noxious vapours, vapours that made my belly panic as though I was a little page at Westminster again. I had done everything wrong. I fell asleep at Elizabeth’s coronation, complained about having to marry her sister, and after that her claws were out.

  Then there was the mortification of my wedding when I was eleven years old. The Woodvilles had mocked me before they put me naked in the marriage bed to touch legs with eight year old Cat. Truly, I have more scars on my soul than beggars have scabs.

  ‘My memories are not good,’ I lied. ‘Let us stow the matter, Meg, please. Your father and your cousins, the Greys, were never kind to me.’

  She snuggled into me. ‘What happened to your brother?’

  ‘Died before manhood. I do have some half-brothers and sisters but I hardly know them. My mother fell in love with an esquire called Richard Darrell, quite below her, so they were never were invited to court and I hardly saw them.’

  ‘My poor Harry, you must have been very lonely, but you had Gloucester as a friend.’

  ‘No, actually I hardly knew him until a few weeks ago. He was in Warwick’s household up in Yorkshire. That’s where I should have been, instead of fetching your aunt’s gloves or cleaning dung off her shoes. But whenever Gloucester and I coincided at Westminster, he was always very amiable to me. We used to talk about things like boys do, horses or hawking.’

  Now my pretty questioner leaned on her elbow as though she might discern more secrets from my expression. ‘My aunt the Queen never liked him either, did she?’

  ‘Your aunt was jealous of the King’s great love for him.’ Yes, Dead Ned had shooed the Woodville jackals away from his little brother but he let them maul me.

  ‘So you spent your entire time at the court after that?’

  ‘Yes, save for a brief while as esquire in my lord of Pembroke’s household at Raglan. I was very happy there and his lady and daughters were gracious and kind. Lady Margaret Beaufort’s son, Tudor, who is now an exile in Brittany, was an esquire there as well. She visited him once or twice.’ Hardly at all, but more than my mother ever did. ‘She was married to my uncle in those days.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Meg stroked her finger through the hairs on my chest. “So why could your uncle not have been your guardian?’

  ‘Don’t you understand how it works? I was worth too much as a ward. Now are you done raking through my past? Remind me to recommend you to the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower as an interrogator.’

  ‘Thank you, I shall look forward to his offer. So you remained with my lord of Pembroke until you took over your own household?’

  I shook my head. ‘Warwick put pay to that. When he rebelled against King Edward, his men slew my lord of Pembroke and I was back in your aunt’s household again.’ I found her hand and carried it to my lips. ‘I cry you mercy. Can we be done with this?’

  ‘Not yet. Don’t you see it helps me understand you better?’

  ‘Don’t probe too deep, my dear,’ I warned her, kissing her shoulder. ‘You may find I am just a rainbow bubble of vanity. A pin’s prick and pfft!’

  ‘I don’t believe that for an instant, Harry Stafford, and do not try and distract me either.’

  I groaned and flopped back heavily against the pillows.

  ‘Ha – rry.’

  ‘What you have to remember, Meg, is that your aunt and your father did not treat me with kindness.’ Never in a million million years, would I have imagined myself lying naked with Rivers’ daughter, telling her such a thing. ‘At Westminster it was French nods and calumny, never honest trust. They taught me to love beautiful things but not how to love.’

  ‘Are you saying that you have never fallen in love, my lord.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I have. There was a milkmaid at Raglan. Ouch!’

  ‘My father knew how to love.’

  Ha! Rivers was one person who did understand vanity.

  ‘Father would have married my mother had he been free.’ I did not correct her; all married men say that.

  ‘And is your mother married to another?’

  ‘Indeed not, there has only been my father and she is still deeply in love with him. It is for her sake just as much as mine that I want him pardoned.’

  I did not want to ride down that bridlepath again. ‘I daresay your mother’s parents were none too pleased.’

  ‘Oh no, Harry, they supported her decision. After all, being the lover of the Queen of England’s brother is better than being the wife of a nobody.’

  ‘I suppose so.’ I wondered if her husband Poyntz would agree with that remark.

  She leaned over and kissed me. ‘Do you trust me?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lied, running a finger along her lower lip. Much as she delighted me, I would not tell her anything that could be useful to her aunt.

  ‘Do you think you could love me like my father loves my mother?’

  ‘I think I might manage that.’ The only way to deal with a woman when she is delving too deep is to kiss her. They cannot kiss and talk at the same time.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Royal Council met in Westminster Palace at ten next morning. My cousin and I were hoping to gain their permission to fetch Prince Richard from West
minster Sanctuary. It was crucial that we had possession of both the princes before I made my arguments to Parliament that Gloucester should by right be king. What point in deposing the older prince, if the Queen still held the younger?

  It proved to be the stormiest session of the Royal Council that I had ever attended. On the surface of it, nothing could have been more reasonable than my cousin’s suggestion that Prince Richard should attend his brother’s coronation. No one argued with that but we spent an infernal time debating the question of extricating the boy from sanctuary against his mother’s wishes. Richard was determined to send Chancellor Russell to negotiate with Elizabeth, however, he made it quite clear that if that failed, force might be the only way.

  At that suggestion, all the bishops puffed up their feathers at the idea of sacrilege, and the old story about St Peter manifesting in person to consecrate the abbey was dredged up. It is incredible that the imagination of some drunken fisherman out on the dusky marshes hundreds of years ago should affect the decisions of grown men in this day, but there it was. It annoyed me so mightily that I made the first of many speeches that were to direct events within the realm. What loosened my tongue was Russell blethering about Elizabeth’s fears as a mother.

  ‘Womanish fear!’ I exclaimed loudly. ‘Don’t you mean womanish perversity, chancellor?’ I stared down the board at where he sat with the other bishops. ‘I dare swear by my very soul, my lords, that she does not need to fear anything, either for her sons or herself. There is no man here who wants to got to war against women.’ I smiled and added smoothly, ‘Would to God some of her kinsmen were women, and then we should have some peace.

  ‘However, what does concern me,’ I continued after their chuckles had died down, ‘is that if Russell’s golden eloquence fails to convince her, she may well try to smuggle the child out of the kingdom, and what fools we shall all look then if she succeeds. The little prince will be at the mercy of the King of France or any foreign prince who desires to see our country riven by civil strife once more. I say we should get the child out by any means rather than have him slip through our fingers.’