The King's Bed

Margaret Campbell Barnes

Description

When the two cloaked horsemen come riding pell-mell down the rain-spattered street, Tansy Marsh wonders why the rich, belated travelers have selected her father's inn, with the ostentatious sign of his more successful rival hanging so invitingly across the way. But Robert Marsh's sign of the White Boar carries the badge he fought under with Richard III when the King was Duke of Gloucester, and with the cohorts of upstart Henry Tudor threatening a renewal of the long, tiresome civil wars of the red and white roses, the King's riders are seeking only faithful friends. As a result of their coming, greed and pathos, kindly humor, tragedy and tender love will have their day at the White Boar Inn, which is to become notable, infamous and sensational in turn because the King spent his last night there in his richly carved traveling bed. 

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 03 février 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456636616
• Langue: English

Extrait

The King's Bed
by Margaret Campbell Barnes
Subjects: Fiction -- Historical; Royalty

First published in 1961
This edition published by Reading Essentials
Victoria, BC Canada with branch offices in the Czech Republic and Germany
[e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except in the case of excerpts by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Margaret Campbell Barnes



The

King’s Bed

For CATHY,
when she grows old enough
Chapter One
An angry sunset flamed over Leicester, as if reflectingthe troubled heart of England. City walls and gates, gabledhouses, and the massive Abbey of St. Mary might all havebeen but a flat template carved in black wood against theportentous sky. The heat of an August day still hung aboutoppressively, trapped in narrow streets by overhanging eaves.
It was the hour when the day’s work was done and townsfolkusually strolled abroad to take the air; but a sense oftension and the threat of ominously piling thunder cloudskept the women grouped apprehensively about their doors,while their men sat elbow to elbow on tavern benches grumblingat the danger to trade and fidgeting for news of theinvader.
At the sign of the White Boar seventeen-year-old TansyMarsh, helping her father to serve their customers, heard allthat they said. But she heard it with the half-interested earsof youth. National crises and party arguments about Yorkistsand Lancastrians, over which her elders waxed so hot, concernedher less closely than the color of her new gown forMichaelmas, the lovableness of her new pony, Pippin, orthe spells of breathlessness which had recently attacked herfather.
“If this Lancastrian, Henry Tudor, has landed in Wales itcould mean civil war again,” declared William Jordan, themaster of the grammar school, through the sweaty heat ofthe low beamed room.
“He be landed right enough,” confirmed the Guild Hallwatchman, who should know. “At Pembroke, so that Welshmerchant who rode in this morning told our Mayor. Andmarching nearer and nearer across Wales every hour, makingtowards Shrewsbury, he said. And because he marches underhis father’s banner of the Welsh dragon, men rush singingto join him, swelling his handful of invaders at every marketcross.”
“Ten groats to our Tansy’s shoe buckle the King will bringan army down from Nottingham to stop him!” wagered TomHood, the dashing young fletcher, catching her about thewaist.
“An’ a pretty clash there’ll be when they meet!” guffawedthe blacksmith, tossing back his ale with relish.
To fletchers and farriers the prospect of approaching armiesmust suggest gain, supposed Robert Marsh, the landlord.But having struggled for years against the ill effects of anarrow wound in the chest sustained on the Scottish borderand being now settled in life with an extravagant secondwife, he wanted no more Lancastrian troublemakers drawingmen away to battle from his tavern benches. Business waschancy enough at it was, with that loud-voiced, enterprisingrival Malpas over at the newly built Golden Crown, and hehimself not able to work as he used. “Our Duke’ll makemincemeat of the Tudor,” he prophesied testily, beckoning tohis man Jod to breach a fresh cask.
Richard the Third had been King of England for over twoyears, but to many a Midland man like Marsh who had foughtunder him he would always be the Duke : young RichardPlantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, who had spent most of hislife soldiering to keep the peace for his elder brother, thefourth Edward, serving him loyally, from one campaign toanother, with little time to join in Edward’s court revels andphilandering.
Because mine host was not one to speak lightly, his wordslent graphic reality to the probable encounter. An uneasysilence hung in the room. “How far would King Richard’sarmy have come by now, think you, sir?” quavered a first-yearapprentice, voicing the fear in several minds.
“Not far as yet, my lad,” replied Marsh kindly, as muchto reassure his own young daughter as the questioner. “Buthe makes his men march swiftly, as I should well know.”
“Do you suppose he will come through Leicester?” askedthe fletcher, with more eagerness than fear.
“More likely westwards, towards Gloucester, so as to preventthis upstart Tudor from crossing the Severn. Though if hebe too late for that maneuver, he might well make for thestronghold of Warwick so as to cut him off from London.It would be like his bold military skill to place himself inthe very middle of his kingdom. But who can tell?”
What with the heat and the rumors and the distant thunder,it had been a trying day. Noting the landlord’s weariness,and sharing it, the gray-haired schoolmaster rose and handedhis empty tankard to Tansy with a half-sketched bow. Therewas a fair purity about her which made men of discernmenttreat her with respect, and even the roughest churl presentknew that if he presumed to do otherwise in her father’spresence he would soon find himself on the wrong side ofthe Boar’s hospitable doors. “Our good friend Marsh isprobably right,” Master Jordan said. “And as even Warwickis over thirty miles away, there should be no bloodshed here.So I wish you all a peaceful good night.”
The beloved old pedagogue’s departure was the signalfor a general scraping back of stools and benches. The Abbeybell began to ring the Augustine brothers to bed, the sunhad sunk behind the castle walls, and—invasion or no invasion—manyof Marsh’s customers would have to be upat cockcrow. With a hubbub of “good nights” they left intwos and threes, going their ways along the darkening streetshome to their nervous wives.
Jod bolted the door behind them and gathered up thelast of the dirty mugs. Tansy, yawning, lighted a candle at thedamped-down kitchen fire to light herself to bed. And RobertMarsh sat down abruptly on an upturned barrel, trying tohide his exhaustion.
Glancing across at him, Tansy forgot her own weariness in arush of anxious affection. “Bring your master a cup of mulledmalmsey, Jod,” she called, carrying her candle to the tablewhere her father sat. “Is it your heart again?” she askedanxiously.
“Or the heat.” Robert Marsh shrugged, trying to makelight of it.
“Small wonder, with such a fug of stale liquor and sweat!”said Tansy, pushing open a casement to freshen the air. “Howhorrible they all smell!”
“The result of honest toil,” he reminded her. “But I wishthat you did not have to wait on them.”
“I like to, since it helps you. And it is only when Dillygoes home to her parents.”
But they both knew that it was not so much the youngserving maid’s occasional absence which put more work onTansy as her stepmother’s proud idleness. While there weretwo unwed girls to serve drinks to half the louts of Leicester,let them do it until they dropped, thought Mistress RoseMarsh, going her pleasure-loving ways about the town. Itwas a recognized factor in the household, but not one ofwhich Robert or his daughter ever spoke. They merely heldthe time precious in her absence.
When Jod had brought the sweetened steaming wine andgone out into the yard to shoot the stable bolts, Tansy drew astool close to her father. “You are not really worried about allthis talk of more civil war?” she asked, seeing that thenormal color had come back into his face.
“No need to be,” he assured her, settling himself moreeasily with his elbows on the table. “This Tudor’s claim tothe throne is flimsy as thistledown. Descended from Edwardthe Third he certainly is, but only through the third son,John of Gaunt, and his children’s governess, Katherine.”
“Sister-in-law to the poet Chaucer, wasn’t she? You rememberhow Mother used to recite to us lovely lines from hisstory of the Canterbury Pilgrims?”
“Aye. I remember.” Robert Marsh sighed, and took up histale. “And when John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, hadhad a family by her, he married her. And their descendant,Margaret Beaufort, married one of these Welsh Tudors.”
“And the Tudors themselves?”
“Owen Tudor was put in charge of the household of Henrythe Fifth’s widowed queen, Katherine of Valois, and had theeffrontery to marry her .”
“But everyone says they were so deeply in love that itwasn’t just ambition,” sighed Tansy romantically.
“That’s as may be. But the fact remains that they marriedtheir elder son Edmund to Margaret Beaufort and so becamethe grandparents of this present perfidious claimant, HenryTudor.”
“Who has French royal blood as well as Welsh.”
“And has cunningly picked the propitious moment whenour King Richard is widowed and his infant son but recentlydead. There is no direct heir.”
Tansy nibbled at a honey cake and spoke diffidently becauseshe knew that her father would brook no criticism of theKing. “They do say that the child’s death was a judgmentfrom Heaven because of those two poor Princes shut upin the Tower. Pratt, the packman, who is often in London,swears that they have been murdered. No one ever seesthem now and——”
“A packman has to bring gossip so as to sell his wares.The apartments in the Tower are a royal residence like anyother, and what profit would it be to the King to murder hisown brother’s boys after they had been declared bastards,because of their father’s previous marriage, and the crownfreely offered to him?”
“None, I suppose, though he might feel safer,” agreedTansy, her mothering heart still shocked by the packman’slurid tales. “And you think the people still like him wellenough to stand by him, as you do?”
“They certainly should, seeing the good firm rule he hasgiven them after all the wars of the red and white roses.Peace on the borders, a truce with Scotland at last, andprotection for our trade abroad. Why, even our laws arewritten in English now, instead of highfalutin Latin, sothat the meanest poacher can understand what he is convictedof. And this new idea he ha