The King’s Mistress

Hath chose thee to mine heir,

And my name is Merry England.”

Charles laughed in delight as Jane sang in response.

“Here is my hand,

My dear lover England,

I am thine with both mind and heart.”

THE MORNING WAS BLESSEDLY UNEVENTFUL COMPARED TO THE PREVIOUS day’s ride, and at midday they stopped beneath a huge oak tree to eat. Jane was very conscious of Charles’s hands on her waist as he helped her to dismount, and she could feel her cheeks going pink at the vivid memory of his lips on hers the previous night.

“I had a close call of it last night,” Charles said when they were settled comfortably with their meal spread on a blanket, and Jane’s heart skipped before he broke into a smile.

“The cook told me to wind up the jack,” he said, taking a swallow of ale from the leather bottle. “And I had not an idea what she meant.”

“Oh, no,” Jane laughed. “It’s a spit for roasting meat, that winds up like a clock.”

“So I know now, but she must have thought me a thorough idiot when I looked around the room to see what she could mean. She pointed to it, and I took hold of the handle, but wound it the wrong way. Or so she told me, with a glower and a curse. ‘What simpleton are you,’ she asked, ‘that cannot work a jack?’ I thought quick and told her that I was but a poor tenant farmer’s son, and that we rarely had meat, and when we did, we didn’t use a jack to roast it.”

Henry laughed, but it was to Jane that Charles was looking with a smile on his face.

AS AFTERNOON DREW TOWARDS EVENING, A TALL CHURCH SPIRE rose in the distance ahead.

“That will be Cirencester,” Henry said. “The Crown Inn is said to be friendly and comfortable, though right at the marketplace and heavily travelled.”

“Then the Crown it is,” Charles said. “I’ll keep to the room and keep my head down when I must pass among strangers.”

The Crown lay just off the main road and only feet from the medieval stone church. As they rode into the inn yard, Jane was alarmed to see that it was full of soldiers and that another party of troopers were right behind them.

“Never fear,” Charles murmured, dismounting. “Leave it to me.”

He helped her to the ground, and after an exchange of glances, Henry tossed him the reins of his horse as well. To Jane’s astonishment, Charles swaggered forward into the crowd of red-coated soldiers, bumping into shoulders, stepping on feet, and provoking a hail of oaths as the men scrambled to avoid being trampled by the horses.

“Have a care, you clotpole!”

“Poxed idiot!”

Jane made to step forward, but Henry’s hand on her arm stayed her. Charles glanced around as if in astonishment, his mouth gaping open.

“Beg pardon, your worships.”

His accent was thickest Staffordshire, as if he had grown up in the country around Bentley Hall. A burly sergeant, tall but not so tall as Charles, shoved him hard and glowered at him.

“You whoreson fool! Do you need teaching manners?”

He pulled back his fist, and Charles flinched as though in fear.

“Kick him like the dog he is, Johnno,” another soldier called, and there was a chorus of laughs.

Charles plucked his hat from his head and hung his shoulders in sheepish apology.

“I’m sorry, your worship. Most sorry, sir.”

Johnno stood sneering at him, as if deciding whether to strike him or not, but then shrugged.

“Well, get on with you, then. And let it be a lesson to you for next time.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” Charles said, tugging at his forelock and grinning like a child reprieved from a whipping. “Thank you, sir.”

Nodding at the muttering soldiers to either side of him, he ambled towards the stable with the horses.

“I still say you should have thrashed him,” a second sergeant called out to Johnno.

“Not worth dirtying my coat.”

The men laughed, and turned their attention back to whatever they had been doing when they were interrupted.

“WITH ALL THESE SOLDIERS I’VE ONLY BUT TWO ROOMS LEFT,” THE landlord said. “And not even room for your servant in the stable. He’ll have to sleep on a pallet in your room, sir.” He had witnessed the scene in the stable yard, and grinned at Henry. “Perhaps it’s just as well you keep the fool out of harm’s way.”

They ordered food to be brought upstairs rather than going down to the taproom to eat, and by the time Jane had washed her face and hands, the men were already waiting in Henry’s room. Charles, in breeches and shirtsleeves, was lounging on a chair near the fire, his long legs stretched before him and his feet propped on a stool. He looked like a great cat, Jane thought, watching the play of his muscles beneath the linen of his shirt. There was something catlike about the glint in his eyes, too, as he gave her a lazy smile.

“Well,” he grinned. “I reckoned that blundering among the troops would anger them so that they’d not think to look beyond their rage, and so it did. But the ostler had keener eyes. As soon as I came into the stable, I took the bridles off the horses, and called him to me to help me give the horses some oats. And as he was helping me to feed the horses, ‘Sure, sir,’ says he, ‘I know your face.’”

Jane gasped and Henry looked at him in alarm, and Charles nodded wryly.

“Which was no very pleasant question to me, but I thought the best way was to ask him where he had lived. He told me that he was but newly come here, that he was born in Exeter and had been ostler in an inn there, hard by one Mr Potter’s, a merchant, in whose house I had lain at the time of war.”

“What ill luck!” Henry exclaimed.

“I thought it best to give the fellow no further occasion of thinking where he had seen me, for fear he should guess right at last. Therefore I told him, ‘Friend, certainly you have seen me there at Mr Potter’s, for I served him a good while, above a year.’ ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘Then I remember you a boy there.’”

Jane laughed at Charles’s impersonation of the ostler, nodding in sage satisfaction.

“And with that,” Charles continued, “he was put off from thinking any more on it but desired that we might drink a pot of beer together. Which I excused by saying that I must go wait upon my master and get his dinner ready for him, but told him that we were going for London and would return about three weeks hence, and then I would not fail to drink a pot with him.”

“Quick thinking, Your Majesty,” Henry grinned.

A knock at the door heralded the arrival of dinner. Once the kitchen boy was gone, Jane made to serve Charles, but he waved off her attentions and begged her and Henry to sit and eat with him.

Riding pillion for so many miles was wearying, and Jane’s body ached in unaccustomed places. The men appeared exhausted as well, and hot food and warmed wine brightened their spirits and revived their energy.

“Do you know”—Charles smiled over a leg of chicken—“I begin to think that I may be safe after all. Only one more day of riding, and we shall be at Bristol.”

“And nothing will hinder us from getting you there, Sire,” Henry said, “though it costs my life.”

Charles looked from Jane to Henry. “I can only hope that I will see the day when I can honour you as I wish for the help you have given me. I have been much humbled by the love and care shown to me by so many of my people these last days. Most of them have been poor folk with little enough for themselves, but they’ve risked their lives to keep me safe, and offered all they have. Indeed, one of them gave me the shirt off his back, quite truly.”