Philippa Carr - Lion Triumphant

“Oh, come, Cat, it’s long ago.”

“Long ago, is it? Is she not still your mistress? I see it all now. The ribbons she puts in her hair; the manner in which she pushes the boy under your feet. What plans has she, this sly little crawling thing? What does she hope for, to take my place?”

He was alert I fancied. “How could that be! Don’t talk nonsense, Cat.”

“Is it nonsense?” I asked slowly. “How do I know what is happening in the house? I am deceived all the time. My daughters are nothing to you. But you have ever made much of your bastards.”

“They are my sons.”

“Mayhap this woman … this Romilly could give you more sons. She has given you one. I am beginning to understand. I see so much.”

“You see what you want to see. You are an arrogant woman. You led me a dance as no other woman has. You belonged to a Spaniard before you did to me. You gave him a son and what have I had?”

“Was it my fault? Everything that has happened has been due to you. You raped Isabella, Felipe’s bride. It was on you that he sought to revenge himself. What have I ever been but a counter in your games … your wicked cruel games? Jake Pennlyon, I wish to God I had never seen you. It was an ill day for me when I met you on the Hoe.”

“You mean that?”

“With all my heart,” I cried. “You blackmailed me because of what you saw in the leper’s squint.”

“You were playing a game with me. Did you think I didn’t know that. You wanted me as I wanted you.”

“So that I pretended to have the sweat to escape you?”

“By God, I’ll never forgive you for that.”

“What does it matter, eh, now that you have Romilly? She gave you a son. She can give you sons … sons … sons … for as many breeding years as are left to her.”

“She could,” he said.

“They would only be your bastards unless…”

“Who cares for that?” he said. “I have three fine boys and I’m proud of them.”

I wanted him then to seize me, to shake me roughly as he had done so many times before. I wanted him to tell me that it was nonsense. Penn was his son. He had gone to her when I was ill and he was sick with disappointment because I had not given him a son. I wanted him to tell me that it was all over and done with. That he had been unfaithful as I knew he must have been a hundred times … a thousand times during his long voyages from home.

But this was different. He went away and left me and I did not see him again that night.

It’s true then, I told myself. He wants to be rid of me. He wants to marry Romilly, who can give him sons … legitimate sons.

I knew instinctively that my life was threatened and there seemed no doubt by whom. My husband wanted to marry another woman and the reason he wished to marry her was that she could give him sons. This sly creature who had wormed her way into my household with her pliable ways was threatening me.

It was not that she meant more to him than hundreds of other women had. But she had proved that she could give him sons … and men like Jake wanted sons. It was an obsession with them. We had the example of a recent King who had rid himself of several wives—and the great theme of his life had been “Give me sons.”

It was the cry of arrogant men. They must continue the family line. Daughters were no use to them.

Boys adored Jake and he was interested in them; girls meant nothing to him until they reached an age when they could arouse his sexual desires. Jake was a fierce man, undisciplined, a man who had always known what he wanted and gone out to take it.

That was what was happening now.

I was no longer desirable to him because I could not hold out any hope that I would give him sons. He wanted me out of the way.

I thought then of Isabella. I remember the calm intensity of Felipe. He had wanted me; he had wanted to legitimize our son. Isabella had stood in the way of Felipe’s marriage to me as I now stood in the way of Jake’s to Romilly.

Isabella had been found at the bottom of a staircase. She was not the first to die in this way. Long ago the Queen, some said, would have married Robert Dudley. But he had had a wife and she was found dead at the bottom of a staircase.

Beware, unwanted wives.

What could I do? I could go to my mother. I could say: “Mother, let me live with you because my husband is trying to kill me.”

I could tell my daughter perhaps. But how could I? She hated her father already. There was too much hatred in the house. And somewhere at the back of my mind was the thought—the hope—that I was wrong. A part of me said: He would not kill you. He loved you once—oh, yes, this emotion he had for you was love. You are the same except that you are ageing and can no longer bear a son. He would never kill you. You still have the power to infuriate him, to anger him. How could he forget the passionate years, the delight you have had in each other, for it is true that you have. Battles there have been, but have not those battles been the joy of both your lives?

This was why it was so wounding and so impossible that Jake should want to kill me.

I would wake in the night trembling from some vague nightmare.

Jake was away a great deal and I was often alone. He was visiting the towns along the coast where preparations were going on for the possible coming of the Spanish Armada.

I was glad in a way. It gave me time to think. I went over many of the little incidents of our life together. I remembered vividly scenes from the past. And always afterward I would say: It is not so. I don’t believe this of him … not of Jake.

I refused to see Romilly. She was aware, of course, that I knew who Penn’s father was. Jake must have told her.

Penn was kept well out of my way and I never saw the boy. I could not bear to look at him—sturdy, healthy, his home my house, the son another woman had given Jake when I had failed to do so.

Linnet was worried about me. “Are you well, Mother?” she asked constantly. She would make me lie down and sit beside me.

Strange things started to happen. Once I awoke in the night when Jake was away and saw a figure in my room. A shadowy figure dressed in gray. It stood at the door. I could not see the face, for it was as though it were wrapped in a shroud.

I screamed and some of the servants came running into my room.

“Who is there?” I cried. “Someone came into the room. Find who it was.”

They searched, but they could find no one. Jennet appeared at some time later, half-asleep. I knew she had had farther to come than the others—from the bed she was sharing with a lover.

“It was a nightmare,” said Linnet. “I shall write and ask my grandmother to send something to make you well. You are not yourself.”

Who had come into my room, and for what purpose? What was the matter with me? I was not the sort to be intimidated. Why was I overcome by this strange lassitude so alien to my nature?

Linnet said I was to stay in bed for a day. I had had an unpleasant shock. She brought my food to me. I felt very sleepy.

“That is good,” she said. “It shows you need a rest.”

I slept and when I awoke it was dusk. I saw a shadowy figure by my bed and I cried out. Linnet was bending over me.

“Everything is all right, Mother. I have been sitting with you while you slept.”

Yes, I was different. Something was happening to me. I could not throw off this tiredness. I found that I was falling asleep during the day.

What is changing me? I asked myself, and once again I thought of my grandmother who knew so much about herbs and plants and how she used to talk to me when I was a child. My attention had often wandered, but my mother had said: “You must listen to your grandmother when she talks, Cat dear. She is very clever about these things and they are important to her. When terrible tragedy came to her she went into her garden and found solace there and she prides herself on her knowledge as you do on your riding.”