Royal Mistress (16 page)

Aye, William’s spirits were high that month, but Jane did not benefit. Her husband was no longer even offering her bribes to keep her peace about his inadequacy, and thus no new gowns were forthcoming. Husband and wife ate dinner together for the sake of appearances, but since the day of the hunt, Jane had resolved to stop the pretense that either had respect for the other, and they barely spoke unless it was in front of customers. They certainly did not share the same bed.

Toward the end of January, when Jane despaired of ever seeing the sun again or knowing what being happy meant, she and William were summoned to court in a gesture of Edward’s gratitude to the city merchants for their part in financing the French expedition. For very different reasons, the anticipation of this event made both husband and wife courteous with each other again. William spared no expense in dressing Jane in the most luxurious satin in his warehouse and paid a vast sum to have a hundred white silk roses sewn upon its iridescent sea green sheen.

“It matches your eyes,
lieveling,
” Sophie had said when she came by on the day to bring Jane a handwoven silken belt to wear for good luck. She plucked a pendant of ambergris on a delicate gold chain from her friend’s jewel casket, shaking her head at the jumble of pretty gewgaws it contained. “A simple necklace is enough, I believe.”

Jane twirled for Sophie, the golden veil on her headdress floating like a sunset cloud about her. Then she stopped abruptly. “I wonder if Tom Grey will be there?”

Sophie clicked her tongue in disapproval. “You must not seek him out or speak his name, Jane. He is not for you, you know this. Promise me you vill pretend to be a lady today for Villiam’s sake. He is not so bad, my dear, and he secures for you a future.” She
looked wistful. “I can only dream of a life like yours, Jane. Do not throw it into the river, I beg of you.”

She looked so serious that Jane flung her arms about the staid young woman, laughing. “You worry too much, silly Sophie. I promise not to draw attention to myself, if that will make you feel better, but I shall do it for me and not for William. You forget, I have a friend at court now,” she added, her eyes twinkling. “Lord Hastings will see me and tell me what to do and say, so have no fear on my behalf.”

But Will Hastings was not there, much to Jane’s chagrin. She discovered soon after her arrival at the palace that he had returned to his responsibilities as captain of Calais and would be gone for several weeks.

To Jane’s astonishment, William chose to open his purse and take a wherry upriver to the Westminster pier. They would arrive in style like the wealthier courtiers instead of riding through the muck in the marshy road from the city to the palace and risk being robbed. William had taken great pains with his own wardrobe, Jane observed, and she complimented him on the fox-fur trim on his mercer’s dark blue robe. Jane was pleased that this year’s livery color was less garish than last year’s burnt umber; the hood in particular had given most mercers’ skin a deathly pallor. His hair even smelled clean for once, she noted, and the excitement of the event gave his pale face some color and his eyes a sparkle.

Westminster Hall was ablaze with light, putting the White Hart insignia of the second King Richard into sharp relief along the window embrasures. Jane lifted her eyes to the massive hammer-beamed rafters high above and wondered at the carpenters’ courage. William hailed a fellow mercer and Jane found herself in conversation with his clatterer of a wife, while her eyes roamed the room doing exactly what Sophie had warned her not to do: search for Tom.

A fanfare of trumpets heralded the arrival of the king and queen,
and all necks stretched a few inches in order to catch a glimpse of the royal couple. Jane was so short, she saw nothing, but would have enjoyed watching Edward clap a merchant here and there on the shoulder and move among his subjects like a man rather than a king, although there was no mistaking who was the monarch in the room. However, later, as she munched on a sweetmeat, she saw the couple plainly as they mounted the canopied dais and sat side by side on outsize, high-backed thrones.

“Ah, but she is beautiful,” Jane declared to her awed companion as they gazed at Elizabeth with her perfect oval face, creamy white skin, pink-tinged cherubic mouth, and large almond-shaped eyes. “She is almost too beautiful to be real.”

Jane then turned her attention to the king, whose weight had caused him to lose the five years of youth he had on the queen. She had, of course, seen him riding through the city streets on several occasions, and she had always liked the way he engaged with his subjects. You could almost imagine he was one of them, she had noticed, as he would wave expansively, smile, and even shout “God’s greeting to you!”

What a handsome couple, Jane remarked to herself, staring at the queen’s magnificent crimson satin overdress encrusted with seed pearls, a jeweled collar about her slender neck. Edward wore a deep purple long velvet gown trimmed in ermine, the fur exclusive to royalty. A simple coronet crowned his thick golden-red hair and a heavy gold collar of his favorite double S hung about his shoulders. A lesser man would have been weighed down by it, Jane thought, but Edward was no widow’s mite. He was a giant among his people, standing six foot and three inches, and he was beginning to get a girth to match.

Soon the line formed for the presentations, and conversation came to a halt as the merchants and their wives jostled for position. Jane suddenly saw her mother and father near the front of the queue but refrained from waving or calling out, which she
might have done on any other occasion. It took an hour before she and William reached the dais, but not before there had been several older female casualties behind her, women overcome from standing on the stone floor in their heavy gowns for so long, and who had to be escorted out to an antechamber to sit down or out into the fresh air.

“Mercer William Shore and Mistress Shore of Coleman Street,” Chamberlain Roger Ree intoned after William had given their names. Jane thought William’s back would break in two so low did he bow, and she smiled to herself as she sank into her own reverence and peeked up at the king. The expression she saw on his face wiped the smile from her own. She knew only too well the look of lust.

Sweet Jesu, she said to herself, he has seen something he wants; what now?

E
dward liked entertaining his subjects. He liked being king and dispensing goodwill, whereas Elizabeth had complained that she was having to spend the afternoon watching a parade of peasants faun in front of her while she pretended to enjoy it.

As he watched the wealthy men of the city show off their finery, it gave him immense satisfaction to know his reign had resulted in a new prosperity for England. After a hundred years of war with France followed by a costly civil war between his own house of York and his predecessor’s house of Lancaster, the treasury was being refilled with profits from trade, not taxes for war. These merchants were reaping the rewards of his policies, he was thinking proudly, when his thoughts were instantly quelled as “Mercer William Shore and Mistress Shore of Coleman Street” rang out, and he saw perfection step in front of him.

Bones of Christ, but this must be Hastings’s paragon, he thought. And that lazy stepson of his, Tom Grey’s. They did not exaggerate, he noted, and he gripped his seat arms, sat up, and
sucked in his belly. Immediately, Elizabeth’s uncanny intuition told her to beware of this petite but buxom beauty, and she registered the name just in case.

“We are pleased to greet you, Master Shore, mistress.” Edward smiled and bowed his head first to the husband—thinking to himself that Will was right, he is insignificant—and then to Jane, although his eyes had never left Jane’s face. What brazenness that she was meeting his look, and he was immediately intrigued. He loathed simpering women who flattered him, hoping to win his favor. Rarely had he taken up with a milk-and-water female; his Bess had taught him to enjoy a woman of spirit, and anyone lacking it bored him.

Edward appeared transfixed, and Elizabeth, annoyed, waved the couple on.

“He spoke to us, wife!” William exclaimed when the Shores were out of royal earshot. He was as animated as his sober personality allowed. “Did you notice? We were the only ones in our group he spoke to.”

Jane despaired of him and grimaced. If he had eyes in his head or one jealous bone in his sexless body, her husband might have deduced the real reason for the king’s unusual interest in Mercer Shore and his wife.

T
wo days later, when William had been called away unexpectedly on a business venture in Kent, a messenger came to the Coleman Street house not long after terce and left a packet for Mistress Shore. He told the servant he would return at the same time the next day for an answer.

Curious, Jane used her knife to open the bulky missive, not recognizing the rose seal, and gasped as she looked inside. A pearl the size of a filbert and set in the center of a golden rose dangled from the end of a velvet ribbon that was wrapped around a piece of parchment.

I would see you again, Mistress Shore, if you will accompany my man on the morrow. Fear not, your husband is detained and shall not hinder you, should you choose to come.

Jane blinked several times before she believed the signature:
Edward R
.

“The king,” she said out loud, and Ankarette looked up from her mending and asked if Jane had spoken. Quickly stowing the letter and necklace back into the packet, she replied:

“Aye, I do believe I need a cup of ale, good Ankarette. When you have fetched it for me, I would like to be alone apace before I prepare to tend the shop.”

When she was finally by herself, she sat by the window, removed the contents of the packet again, and placed the necklace and the letter beside her on the window seat. She stared at them both for a long time, her mind moving as fast as a hare fleeing a hound. She was no fool; she was certain she knew what this meant—what Edward wanted. But was it what she wanted? Or did that matter? How could she refuse? He was the king; she was his subject.

Jane knew she should enlist God’s help or at least the Virgin Mary’s, and maybe even Sophie’s. But her instinct told her to make her own decision and sort it out with God later. If the truth be told, she was disappointed in Him after her dismissal by the dean of the Court of Arches. God obviously did not listen to insignificant young female supplicants, so why should she consult Him now.

She hugged herself and knelt upon the seat, opened the window to the wintery sky, and stared over the rooftops of her beloved London. Having the city thrumming below her always gave her strength; she could disappear in the alleys if she chose and still find friends to shelter her should she decide to run away from the king’s advances. It comforted her to know that London would hide her.

But why run away, Jane Shore? her mischievous imp asked her. Had she not wanted to escape from this prison of a union, this
sham of a marriage bed? Perhaps William would divorce her once he knew she had given herself to the king. Aye, he could wring whatever business deal he could from Edward as the price of her freedom, could he not? She had to laugh at herself then. Imagine William threatening the king, she thought, but she could not. From all she had heard, Edward did not seem to care one whit for a lady’s virtue or her husband’s price. She rightly assumed he would not give a fig about cuckolding her husband. She felt a pang of guilt thinking about her husband, but as he was absent, he would never know, she tentatively reasoned. And if he did, would he care? She could not say, but she imagined he might tell her to “be pleasant, wife,” as he had with Hastings, hoping for royal business. But what of her own virtue? If she were ashamed of the looks she had received in Greenwich Park, how much more viciously the tongues would wag if she were to become the royal mistress.

What of the queen? Did the king not care about his wife’s feelings? The Grey Mare, as she had been dubbed by Londoners many years ago, was known to be a cold, unapproachable woman, for all her beauty. However, Jane had to admit, she had never heard a whiff of scandal about her, unless you counted the gossip about how potions may have been used to win Edward. Ah, but mayhap Queen Elizabeth was a cold fish in bed and that was why Edward, disappointed, cast elsewhere. And now apparently she, Mistress Jane Shore of Coleman Street, had swum unsuspecting into his net.