Under cover of the noise, Bessie leaned close to my ear. “You should go to him.”
I shook my head. “Women are not permitted to interfere in tournaments.” Neither would it be a good idea to call more attention to myself when feelings ran so high against the French. Will’s idea had worked, but only to a point. Many in the crowd still wanted blood.
“If you will not go yourself, then send one of the Lady Mary’s pages to inquire after your friend.” Kindhearted to a fault, Bessie found one of the boys for me. Under cover of the end of the tournament—without a mêlée—and the announcement that the Duke of Suffolk was champion of the day, a young lad in livery slipped away from the grandstand unnoticed.
While I waited anxiously for his return from the tents with news, Queen Catherine, who was the avowed enemy of all things French, announced that 114 lances had been broken that day. She presented Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, with a jewel-encrusted gold ring.
Guy’s reward was a visit from the king’s surgeons and apothecaries.
“YOU ARE FORTUNATE not to have lost an eye!” I said to Guy as he lay on the field bed. He had been moved from Longueville’s pavilion to the duke’s lodgings, into the tiny, windowless cubicle he’d claimed for a bedchamber when he’d first taken up residence at Greenwich Palace
Guy made no reply.
“His ears are still ringing,” Ivo Jumelle said. “He cannot hear you.”
“I intend to remain until I am certain everything necessary has been done for him.”
I moved closer to the bed, noting that although it had the usual tester, ceiler, and bed curtains, the bedstead folded to make it portable. The duke had brought into captivity all the furnishings he’d taken with him on campaign.
Guy’s face was a trelliswork of scratches, gouges, and bruises. There was swelling around both eyes and along the line of his jaw. I swallowed convulsively as I realized it was not just his sight that the lance had endangered. The wooden tip had slid upward beneath the visor, beneath the fringe of hair that covered Guy’s forehead, nicking the center of that expanse. A tiny bit more force and it would have penetrated deeply enough to kill.
Without warning, I collapsed at the foot of the bed, my knees too weak to hold me upright any longer. With fingers that felt cold as ice I reached for Guy’s hand.
“It distresses you that he is injured?” Ivo watched me with an unnerving intensity, head cocked to one side like a curious bird.
To show too much concern was unseemly, but I was strangely reluctant to release my grip. Then Guy squeezed my fingers and I forgot all about the boy’s presence. Ivo was the duke’s servant, no doubt some gentleman’s son, but of little consequence himself.
Guy’s eyes slitted open. His gaze caught mine and held. I stared back, trying to read his emotions, but the damage to his face made that impossible. When he finally spoke it was only to ask for something to drink.
After I helped him take several swallows of barley water, I settled myself on a stool pulled close to the head of the bed. “Sleep now, Guy.” I told him. “Rest is the best cure for injuries.”
“Your good luck charm kept me safe.” His hoarse voice was gravelly but strong.
“Not safe enough.”
“You must take it back. To protect you.” To please him, I retrieved the dragon pendant from his discarded clothing.
“You need not keep watch over me.”
“I know I need not. I wish to stay.” I settled once more on the stool.
“The duke—”
“Longueville is with the king and has no need of me.”
I hid my disgust. The duke had abandoned his half brother, who had bled and might have died for him. He was off carousing with King Henry and his companions, celebrating a successful afternoon in the lists. The enmity between English knights and French had been defused, as Will had predicted, by spilling blood. Guy’s blood.
“Talk to me, then,” Guy said. “Take my mind off the throbbing.”
“Is the pain too great? The apothecary left a vial of poppy syrup.”
“Have you ever had a bad tooth? I feel as if I have a whole head full of them.”
I dosed him with poppy syrup first, then began to talk, recalling random memories of Amboise in our shared childhood. “It seems to me,” I said, “that there was a constant parade of workmen coming and going along that winding road that led from the village up to the château.”
“The workmen built that, too—a continuous circular ramp that runs all the way from town to castle, wide enough for wagons.”
“The moat had no water in it,” I recalled.
“King Charles’s courtiers used it as a tennis play.” He winced.
“Is the pain—?”
He waved away my concern. “It will pass, and already I grow sleepy. What else do you remember about Amboise?”
“Courtiers’ houses lay clustered below the walls of the fortress. When I was very small, my father and I used to walk past them and make up stories about the people who lived there.”
“I remember him, I think.” Guy’s words began to slur and I sensed that he would soon fall asleep. I smoothed his brow with one hand, relieved when the skin felt no warmer than was normal.
Amboise. What else did I recall? We could see Tours cathedral in the distance, off to the west, and the forest of Blois in the opposite direction. The main route to reach either was the river Loire. Water traffic had been as steady along that byway as it was on the Thames, with a constant procession of barges and ships bringing all manner of merchandise to the royal court.
“There was a zoo,” I murmured. “I had forgotten that. King Charles kept lions in captivity. And once we went to see a rope walker perform on a rope strung between two towers of the château. He did somersaults and danced and hung by his teeth, all high above the ground.”
I glanced at Guy, wondering if he remembered that day. He was deeply asleep. He lay with one arm flung wide and the other resting on his chest. His face, in repose, looked younger. Even the bruising seemed less severe.
Although I knew I should leave, I remained where I was, watching over him through the evening. Only once, when I heard low voices beyond the door, did I step away. Ivo was the only one there when I peeped out. Frowning, he was turning an oilskin-wrapped packet over and over in his hands.
“For the duke?” I asked in a whisper.
He shook his head. “For me. From my father. This is the first letter he has sent to me since we were captured, although I have written faithfully to him.” Looking cautiously pleased, he broke the seal.
I left him in private in the outer room, where he and Longueville’s four other attendants slept on pallets, to read his father’s letter, but the door did not completely close behind me. A moment later I heard Ivo mutter something to himself, an oath, I thought.
I went to the door. “Ivo? Is something wrong?”
“No, Mistress Jane.”
I studied his pale face. “Something is troubling you.”
“It…it is just that my father has asked me to do something I do not wish to do.” The paleness vanished beneath a wave of color. My questions plainly embarrassed him and he was too polite to remind me that what the letter contained was none of my business. I apologized for disturbing him and returned to Guy’s bedside.
I stayed the night. There was no need, but it was no trouble and I doubted anyone would remark upon my presence in his room when my own lodgings were so near at hand. I fell asleep, head pillowed on arms resting on one side of the field bed.
I woke to discover that my headdress had fallen off. Guy’s fingers rested gently on my hair.
11
The court moved from Greenwich to nearby Eltham in early May. Once I knew Guy would recover from his injuries, and could travel with us, I was happy enough to go. In our new lodgings I had, as before, two rooms for my own. When I was not on duty with the princess, I spent long, lazy afternoons escorting the duc de Longueville and Guy around the place where I had passed so much of my childhood. We ventured into every corner of the old redbrick palace, from the royal lodgings in the donjon in the inner court to the great hall to the grassy mount overlooking the moat where the royal swans glided, their collars glinting in the sun.