Gregory House - The Queen's Oranges

That was not meant as a question from the snarling priest. Ned dropped and gave his best grovelling broken worded excuse. In sympathy at his whimpering, the younger lady tossed him an orange. He maintained his dim aspect and knuckled a grateful thanks, then scuttled out, ignored by all as the door slammed shut behind him. A good turn of speed saw him exit the Privy chambers until, breathing heavily, he’d made it back to the safety of the Livery kitchen.

Ned lent against the cool stone wall and tried to still his thumping heart. By the damned saints, he had to think about this. Something was definitely going on! Well that was obvious. Only a fool would fail to realise that Katherine would fight tooth and claw to hold on to what she considered as her rightful position and title. Was this what Cromwell hoped to find out? Or the darker suspicion brought out by his daemon, had they twigged that they were being watched and this was a deliberate diversion?

The more Ned pondered on that, the less likely it seemed. He felt he’d made a good impression of a slack jawed, dumb as dog’s brains servitor. After all, he’d seen a few so had excellent models. As well, he’d wryly noted exactly how crucial the testimony of servants had been in many a court case. It was amazing the detail of memory, especially when stimulated by the promise of the rack or reward. They weren’t near at stupid as you would have thought!

But what was so important about oranges? And why did he have to lug those heavy baskets up to the Queen’s Privy chamber? It just didn’t make sense. If it was supposed to be a very private affair, why grab a servant, though, as he rubbed his aching head, that could have been explained by natural arrogance. He’d seen more than a few clerics who wouldn’t soil their hands with the slightest speck of labour, if they could expend an equal amount of effort threatening or cajoling someone else to do it for them. After all, thanks to Mistress Black, he did look and smell the part. And the livery, his daemon raised that as ominously interesting, but Ned dismissed it as irrelevant. He had other suspicions to ponder first and more perplexing questions.

Such as, why three of the noblest ladies of the kingdom were, or so it seemed, packing oranges into small baskets themselves? As the highest of nobility, that was something that you would order done, and with the clerics present, that was even more confusing because none looked that deferential. If the baskets were presents for the Court or a religious festival then the timing was out. The Feast of St John’s was still a few weeks off and that festival was bonfires and feasting. He couldn’t recall that giving oranges was any part of it. Anyway according to Meg, the fruit needed to be used really soon before they went mouldy. It could always be some strange foreign custom. If so then why organise it so secretively, and why were the priests involved, a blessing of the oranges? Even his angel didn’t think so.

Ned lent against the wall and sighed despondently. It just wasn’t fair. He was here as a codicil to Cromwell’s writ. From the timing, he wasn’t even meant to find anything! It was merely a footnote in some report being prepared for the Privy Council, such as ‘on the seventh of this month, a pursuivant in our employ noted the following at Richmond Palace’. That should be all.

Another ominous thought surfaced and waved for attention. Ned tried very hard to banish it, but the pesky thing kept on bobbing up at the edge of other considerations. Everyone had spies. It was a fact of life if you were a lord of the land. The pinnacle of the Wheel of Fortuna was a dangerous place. Every rival hungered for your fall. Men racked with ambition and hunger thought nothing of encouraging betrayal. Ned wasn’t naive. He knew that he was just another tool in Cromwell’s array against his competitors. So why was he here? Was he to find something or was he to verify a suspicious report from another of the Councillor’s agents? Or was it that there was no suspicious report and that omission had twitched Cromwell’s curiosity? The absence of information could, at times, be more ominous than its discovery. Ned had a sudden urge to roundly curse his ‘good lord’ for giving him this fool’s errand.

Since the matter of the nullity had surfaced, Richmond Palace must be crawling with informers. Any of the servants could be working for Norfolk, Suffolk, the King himself or no doubt foreign powers, the French and Imperials to name just two. So what was going on? As he had found last year, the mighty had this obsession with labyrinthine plots, under the delusion that the more convoluted it was, the less likely that its true purpose would be divulged. However, as with the affair of the Cardinal’s Angels, plots broke down when they were placed in the hands of less capable minions, unable to appreciate the true breadth, scope and complexity of the scheme-in other words common men, who had to flounder through the more mundane realities of daily misfortune and accident.

Thinking of misfortunes led him to the next worrying question. Last year he’d the dubious pleasure of engaging the attention of one Don Juan Sebastian de Alva, a Spanish gentleman who claimed to serve the Queen. The foreign fop hadn’t been sighted since that unfortunate incident at the badgers set near Grafton Regis, where he had kindly compensated Ned’s humbling and injury, with a splendid horse and a dagger. Ned doubted that the Spaniard had fled home. He’d gained the impression that Don Juan Sebastian intended to gain fame and fortune here and only death would deflect his course. If that was so, then was he lurking here at Richmond? Was the pernicious Spaniard the target of Ned’s commission? That would be sweet justice! Cromwell knew all about the part Don Juan Sebastian had played in the Cardinal’s Angels plot, as well as Ned’s longing for revenge. How did you fathom the cryptic instruction of one’s lord and master? Ned had left a standing commission with Gryne’s men to look out for the offensive foreigner, and occasionally rumour would surface regarding the gentleman in question, but naught else.

That was another difficulty that would have to wait for resolution. The first matter was the current plotting of Queen Katherine. That she was planning something was as apparent as night follows day. Perhaps it came with the Spanish heritage? Her father, Ferdinand, also had an infamous reputation for double dealing and treachery. Whatever this mad scheme was, Ned suspected it included oranges, friars and the mood of London. Even his daemon agreed with that.

***

By the time the leisurely delivery had concluded Ned was ready to scream in frustration. The receipt of the barrels of double ale had gone smoothly. He should know-he’d helped store them, every damned one! After that, the two girls held, he felt, a deliberately long consultation over the details of the next shipment, then an exchange of recipes for sauces or remedies, news of acquaintances, births, deaths marriages, elopements and the good saints knew whatever else took their fancy for TWO whole hours! During that interminable wait, each minute he was expecting the lean priest to come a hunting him again, eager, wrathful and escorted by unfriendly, hard-eyed guards. It wasn’t that Ned was actually hiding under a table or cowering in the shadows. He just used any scrap of cover that was present in the busy kitchen, and as a measure of his apprehension he even offered to take all the slops to the kitchen midden.

Eventually and to Ned’s nervous imagination that was a very tardy eventually, the two girls gave their farewells and having gathered the proffered haunches of venison, sauntered slowly back to the wharf. As extra shielding, he’d taken two of the smoked legs, one slung over each shoulder, the better to hide from view.