Gillian Bagwell - The King’s Mistress

Afterwards, she had begged her father to take her to London, that she might see more plays. “Someday,” he had replied, laughing.

But someday had not come soon enough, and when she was sixteen, Cromwell had ordered the playhouses closed, torn down, the plays to be no more. All of Jane’s family hated Cromwell, but she felt an especial malice towards him for that. He had not only killed the king, he had killed all the past kings as well—glorious Harry V; his father, Bolingbroke, who had dethroned poor lost Richard II to become Henry IV; and all the rest of them.

“Jane!” Withy’s voice cut through Jane’s thoughts. There was no time to think of tucking the book away before Withy heaved into view, pink and exasperated in the heat.

“There you are! Reading again.”

The verb held a freight of disapproval. Jane was the youngest of the Lane siblings, and Withy, thirteen years her senior, still seemed to regard her as a naughty child.

“Sir Clement Fisher will be arriving before long. You haven’t much time to make yourself presentable.”

Withy stood looking down at Jane, her broad face damp with perspiration, and Jane could see her own reflection in her sister’s face as clearly as in a mirror. She had pulled off her cap, and her auburn hair was curling untidily around her shoulders. Her skirt was dusty, and her face warm in the sun. She was comfortable, which meant almost by definition that she was not properly dressed for company. Especially Sir Clement Fisher.

“You know right well he’s like to ask for your hand tonight,” Withy said, swatting at a fly that buzzed around her head. “I’d have thought you would want to take some care for your appearance, this night of all nights. You’re not like to have many more offers, you know.”

“Oh, Withy,” Jane protested, but Withy carried relentlessly on.

“You know it’s true. How many suitors—perfectly good men—have you turned away? And for what reasons? Too old, not handsome enough, not learned enough. And now you’re five and twenty, and Sir Clement is about the only Royalist gentleman left within fifty miles. But I suppose there’s something wrong with him, too?”

“There’s nothing wrong with him,” Jane said. “And yet, I cannot bring myself, though I have truly tried, to have any great desire to be his wife. Or anyone’s wife.”

“And, pray, what else is there for you to be?” Withy’s voice rose in impatience. She stood, hands on sturdy hips, waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know,” Jane said.

Withy was right. She could be someone’s wife, and have a home of her own. Otherwise, she would live on in the homes of her brothers and sisters, never going hungry, never wanting for safety or comfort, but never mistress of her own house or her own life, never with money of her own or the means to be anything other than a spinster relation.

“Well,” Withy said. “I beg you to at least not shame the family or discommode Sir Clement. He’s riding all this way for your birthday supper, the least you can do is wash your face and try to look more like a lady than a milkmaid.”

“And so I shall,” Jane agreed, getting to her feet and dusting off the cover of the folio with her sleeve. “But I want to walk first a bit.”

Withy rolled her eyes.

“Well, don’t be long. In faith, I don’t understand you. Any other woman would be counting the hours until supper time.” She twitched her skirts in annoyance at the buzzing fly and trudged away towards the house.

Jane regretted not having asked her sister to take the heavy folio inside, but likely the request only would have brought a scathing remark about the foolishness of having brought the book outside in the first place.

The orchard lay up the slope some quarter of a mile north of the house. Jane had always loved to escape from the rest of the world there, especially in summer, when the scent of ripening fruit permeated the air. Apples, quinces, pears, apricots, plums, cherries. The trees were laid out in rows, each kind of fruit with its distinctive leaves. Many of the trees were ancient, had stood for far longer than the seventy-five years that the present Bentley Hall had sat on the site of a previous house by that name. Some of the trees had newer tops grafted onto old trunks and still did not look all of one piece. As a child, Jane had liked to imagine that fairies lived in the orchard and watched her, and that perhaps if she were quiet and wished hard enough, they might come out, and perhaps even take her back with them to visit their magic realm.

Jane stopped beneath a plum tree with particularly wide and spreading branches that she had loved to climb as a little girl, and which for some reason had always given fruit sooner than the rest of the trees. One perfect plum, deep purple and fat in its ripeness, hung within reach. She plucked it, and setting the book down carefully on the roots of the tree where it would not be soiled, she bit into the fruit. It was warm from the sun and a spurt of juice trickled down her chin as she ate. The flesh was satisfyingly firm but seemed almost to dissolve with sweetness. Jane threw away the stone and licked her fingers clean, then wiped them on her apron before picking up the book. She would go to the end of the orchard before turning back, she decided.

She had only been walking for another minute or so when her eye was drawn to movement down the lane between the trees. An unfamiliar horse was tethered to an apple tree, and beyond Jane saw three caravans, with smoke rising from beyond them. Gypsies.

Jane’s mother grew tight-lipped with outrage at the thought that the wanderers should presume to camp on the family’s property, but from the time she was a little girl Jane had always been fascinated by the Gypsies, moving from place to place, always seeing something new, with nothing to hold them down. This far from the house they disturbed no one, and as far as she was concerned, they were welcome to the fruit they might pick and the stars above Bentley Hall wheeling over their heads for a few nights.

A black-and-white-spotted dog darted out from under one of the wagons, followed by a smaller rust-coloured mongrel that nipped at its heels. From beyond the wagons a donkey brayed. The scent of food wafted on the air. Jane couldn’t see any of the human inhabitants of the camp, but they were probably cooking the meal or tending to the animals beyond the caravans.

The thought of food reminded her that she should be making herself ready for supper and the visit from Sir Clement Fisher. She turned and made her way towards the house, the heavy scent of fruit in her nostrils. The trees in the orchard were so thickly leaved that they blocked the view ahead of her. A stranger would not have known which way to go. Jane was just remembering a time when as a small child she had gone into the orchard to play and got lost, enchanted by the clouds of blossoms overhead that led her deeper and deeper among the gnarled trunks, when she saw a dark-haired young man sitting with his back against one of the trees ahead of her, his legs splayed out in front of him, his eyes closed. One of the Gypsies, without doubt.

He was not more than ten feet away, and what stopped her in her tracks was the jolt of seeing that one of his hands was in motion in his lap, grasping a stalk of vivid ruddy flesh. Jane had never seen a human phallus and her first thought was that it looked nothing like the somewhat repellent appendages of dogs and bulls, and the second was that it was far bigger than she had ever thought a man’s member would be.

The sound of Jane’s footsteps on the ground brought the man’s eyes open with a start. His eyes met hers with surprise, but no shame. In fact, he tilted his head to one side and smiled at her appraisingly. His hand had stopped its rapid up-and-down movement and now he stroked himself languorously, luxuriating in the sight of her, it seemed. He had the look of a fawn, that sensuous forest creature, half man, half beast. His dark hair fell in unruly curls around his head; his brown eyes, the colour of hazelnuts, shone on her warmly. His teeth were vivid white against the florid pink of the tongue that ran along them.