In the Master's Bed

Chapter Three

Restless, Duncan left the hostel late that afternoon to walk the city. Plucking the gittern had not soothed him today.

At home, he would have been roaming the countryside. Harsh land, but he saw beauty in what civilised folk feared. Clear lakes. High hills. Fields, when they thrived, green enough to hurt the eyes.

Unlike this place. If he strayed too far from the city, he’d be in the fens and up to his knees in water, as if the land were sinking into the sea.

So he circled the narrow streets and it wasn’t until he found himself passing St Michael’s again that he realised he was looking for the boy.

At the sound of a quarrelsome voice, he slowed his steps and readied his fists. He should have given the boy more warning about the townsfolk. The last row between townsmen and students had left a bachelor’s student dead.

Little John, with his cocky attitude, would be fair game for a bully. The lad was quick to wave his fists, but he wouldn’t last two minutes in a serious match.

Just ahead, a large man towered over a young lad, pinning him in place with a hand on one shoulder. It was near dusk, but Duncan recognised the pale gold hair.

Little John was in trouble already.

His heart lurched. Without thinking, he stepped over and put his hand on John’s other shoulder and his best Cambridge accent on his lips. ‘What’s going on here?’

John jumped at the touch, but his eyes—blue, Duncan noted for the first time—widened in recognition.

The man didn’t let go. ‘This boy was sneaking around the stable. Probably going to steal a horse.’

‘I was not,’ John began. ‘I just wanted—’

Duncan squeezed his shoulder. He was oddly glad to see the boy, but the lad was no good at holding his tongue. ‘There must be some misunderstanding.’

The man peered at him. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m his master.’

John’s head snapped up in surprise. Thankfully, this time, he kept his mouth shut.

The stableman wasn’t ready to let go. ‘You don’t look like no grad.’

Duncan’s strong arms and shoulders didn’t fit their image of a scholar and he hadn’t yet shaved his summer beard. ‘Maybe not, but that’s what I am and he is one of our Solar boys.’ That would put his punishment in the hands of the University, not the town. ‘I’ll vouch for him.’

The man’s grip loosened enough for Duncan to take control. He turned to John, ignoring the other man as if the matter were settled. ‘Come along now. The bedchambers need sweeping and the laundry’s waiting.’

The lad’s grateful expression turned belligerent. ‘But—’

‘Not a word!’ One wrong move and the stable master could still attack. ‘Leave one more time without permission and you won’t get another chance.’ He put his hand behind the boy’s neck and pulled him up High Street, out of the man’s reach.

‘You’re a wretched lot, all of you!’ he called to their backs.

Duncan heard boots crunch on gravel, then something sharp and hard hit his back. The next rock hit John’s shoulder. He grabbed the boy’s arm and shoved him ahead. ‘Run!’

Duncan’s back took three more blows before they turned the corner, out of range.

When he was sure the man was not going to follow, Duncan stopped, gasping for breath, and shook the boy for lack of sense. He searched the lad for damage, but his blond curls seemed to halo a flawless face. ‘I warned you.’ The words came out in a snarl.

‘You warned me about the butchers!’ He tried to twist away, but was no match for Duncan’s strong hands. ‘That was a stable master.’

‘Well, they don’t like us much either.’

‘Us?’ Little John stopped wriggling and looked up. Not only were the lad’s eyes blue, they had a disturbing tendency to linger. ‘You and me?’

His palm pulsed against the boy’s shoulder. ‘Not exactly.’ The phrase implied a connection Duncan didn’t want to feel. ‘I meant any University men. And you might thank me for saving your miserable hide.’

John’s gaze, like Duncan’s hand, refused to let go. ‘I thank you, then, but I didn’t ask you to rescue me.’

There was something in those eyes, some combination of bravado and vulnerability that tugged at places uncomfortably deep inside.

‘If you don’t want to be rescued, stop getting into trouble. What were you doing there?’

A sullen frown marred the boy’s face. ‘Nothing. I didn’t hurt anything.’

Duncan sighed, exasperated. ‘The widow turned you out?’

The boy hung his head, mercifully breaking his gaze. The words came slowly. ‘There never was a widow.’

Prideful liar. What else had the lad lied about? ‘You had no place to sleep, did you?’

‘I did, too! I was sleeping in the stable until he threw me out!’

‘You wouldna have been so lucky.’ His voice rose and his Cambridge accent fell as he envisioned what had almost happened. He could have lost the boy, lost another one because he’d looked away, just for a moment. ‘He was going to bray ya bloody, break yer neb, and hand ya to the sheriff, who would have thrown you in gaol with the murderers.’

Even in the fading light, he could see the boy’s face turn pale. Something stirred inside him. The lad’s shoulder trembled beneath his palm and he pulled it away. ‘When did you eat last?’

Little John raised a thumb and then two fingers. ‘Monday. They gave me a bowl of porridge at Michaelhouse.’

Duncan sighed. ‘Well, I’ll not leave you to be beaten like a stray dog, though I’ve a mind to beat some sense into you myself. If you’ve got no more brains than to refuse help when it’s offered, you’ll never earn your bachelor’s.’ He might not have saved Peter, he might not be able to save his fadder, but he could save one would-be scholar from starving in the streets. ‘I’m taking you back to the hostel.’

‘As your student?’

‘I didn’t say that.’ He wanted to help the lad, but the idea of becoming his master made Duncan uneasy. It seemed like more than an academic commitment. ‘Besides, why should I? You’ve turned down every offer of help I’ve made.’

His words were met with a pout. This lad was the most prideful piece he’d ever met. ‘Oh? Does that not please you, young gentleman?’ he said, with a sharp tongue. ‘Then stroll over to Trinity Hall and ask for a bed.’

The lower lip quivered. ‘Trinity turned me down.’

Duncan regretted his harsh words. Beset with his own demons, he forgot the lad was alone in the world and still young enough to cry.

Duncan had never been that young. ‘A man doesn’t meet defeat with tears.’

‘But they’ve all turned me down. St Peter’s, King’s Hall, Clare Hall, Michaelhouse—’ He stopped for a gulp of air. ‘All of them.’

Duncan felt a twinge of sympathy. As a young student, he’d forced his way into St Benet’s Hostel. He’d had to force most of what he’d got from life. The only reason he was here at all was because some self-righteous bishop thought a Cambridge education would overcome the ‘waste, desolate and illiterate condition’ of a young man from the north country. The man’s exact words.

Duncan had memorised them.

‘What did they say? Why won’t they take you?’

‘My Latin isn’t good enough.’

‘Well, I said the same, lad. Did you not believe me?’

‘I don’t know what to do now.’

‘You go to the hostels, of course.’ The colleges had permanent buildings and wealthy benefactors, but hostels like Solar, which outnumbered them, were a truer community of scholars, to Duncan’s mind.

‘They won’t take me either.’

‘How many have you been to? Five? Ten? Twenty?’

John looked down at the street again, silent. One thing about the boy. He knew when he’d been caught.

‘Confess, Little John. You haven’t been to Solar Hostel, I know that for a fact.’

‘Five. Maybe six.’

Duncan sighed. ‘Well, you’ve many more to try. And if you can’t find a master among them, you’ll go to grammar school until you’re ready and try again.’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘That’s for the little boys.’

‘Your father never took a rod to you, I can tell that.’ The boy’s sagging jaw confirmed it. ‘You’ll never make a bachelor if you give up so easily.’

‘I’ve been trying ten days and they’ve all said the same. Please. Will you take me?’ The boy’s eyes pleaded as strongly as his lips.

Duncan wanted to say yes, but for all the wrong reasons. Peter would have been just a little older than this if…

His thoughts followed their familiar wheel ruts.

If only he had watched more carefully, if only he hadn’t turned his back, if only he’d tied the boy to him.

His fadder had beat him for his sin. No harder than he beat himself.

He watched the boy’s expectant, upturned face and wondered at his change of heart. He’d saved John from a beating tonight, but he wasn’t sure he, or anyone, could make him a scholar. Besides, he would do the lad no favour if he threw him into rhetoric ill prepared. The other scholars would eat him before they broke fast.

‘I’ll have to think it over.’

‘But you said you would help me!’ Now, it seemed the lad was going to cry. If he didn’t develop tougher sensibilities, he’d never last a year under any master. ‘If you don’t, there’s nothing else I can do.’

Duncan’s sympathy vanished. ‘Nothing else? Are ya still breathin’?’ How many times had his father asked that question?

John’s head snapped up, eyes wide. He nodded, biting his trembling lip.

And every time, knowing the answer was aye, his father had said the same. ‘Then there’s more you can do.’

The boy squared his jaw and swallowed. Face calmer, he nodded, tears gone. ‘Tell me and I’ll do it.’

The blue eyes, defiant and pleading, didn’t leave his. Drawn into the gaze, Duncan had the strange sensation of staring into a reflecting glass, in which things appeared real, but were actually backwards.

He shook off the spell. ‘All right. I won’t leave you to the mercy of the Master of Glomery. I’ll help you with your Latin until you’re ready to study with a master.’ He had the feeling he would regret this, but he couldn’t leave the poor helpless orphan alone in the street. ‘We pay our own way. Do you have money for board and fees?’

‘A few farthings.’

He sighed, having known the answer. He was stuck with a penniless orphan with rudimentary Latin who deserved to be in grammar school. ‘Then you’ll have to work for it.’

‘I will. I promise.’ John nodded, all smiles again. Then, he gave Duncan an assessing frown. ‘What happens when my Latin improves? Will you take me on then?’

The lad was relentless, he’d give him that. But those eyes seemed to claim something more personal than lessons. Something he wasn’t ready to give to anyone. ‘When I’m through with you, you’ll have your pick of masters.’

‘Your Latin’s that good?’

Cheeky lad. He had to admire the boy’s outspoken pluck, even when it was insulting. ‘My Latin received a special commendation at my inception.’

The answering grin was mischievous. ‘Probably because no one could understand your English.’

He socked the boy’s arm, gently. ‘It’s your Latin that needs work, Little John, not my English. But if you’re willing to work, I’ll make you fit to lecture in Latin to these flatlanders.’

‘You don’t like people from this part of the country, do you?’ John gave him an odd glance through his eyelashes.

Odd. He’d never noticed a man’s eyelashes before. ‘Some days, I hate them. And they don’t like me much either.’

‘Do you hate me?’

The lad had twisted his feelings in all directions, save that one. ‘No, I don’t hate you, lad.’ He put his hand on the gilt-gold hair and tussled it. A few strands wound their way around his fingers. ‘You’ve some growing up to do, but when you’re not whining or pouting, I nearly like you.’

And the blinding smile John gave him caused a strange shiver in the pit of his stomach.

Alys de Weston watched Justin squeeze Solay’s hand. His wife did not respond. As the hours lengthened and the candles shortened, Alys had tried without success to shoo him out of the lying-in room. He was not swayed.

Stubborn, that man, always.

She had told neither of them that Jane was gone. As long as his wife had been in childbirth, he could think of nothing else. And in the days since, the babe was so small and frail it took all of them to keep little William alive.

William and his mother.

So she had said nothing, not wanting them to worry. But Alys? Alys was worried.

‘Come,’ she said, tugging his tunic. The man hadn’t eaten in days and had slept less than his wife. ‘Solay is sleeping and you need food.’

She forced him down the stairs into the dim, smoky kitchen. The kitchen girl had fallen asleep, waiting for her summons, so Alys served the soup herself.

‘Justin,’ she said, as he munched bread and cheese without savouring it. ‘Jane is missing.’

She could tell from his absent gaze he had not understood her words. ‘What do you mean, missing?’

A wonderful man and a good son-in-law, but sometimes, they all were dolts. ‘Missing. She’s run away and left her skirts behind.’

She had his attention now. ‘How long?’

‘Since the day the babe was born.’

‘And you didn’t speak til now?’

‘Could you have listened?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. Solay, the babe…I didn’t even notice.’

She patted his arm. ‘You wouldn’t have noticed if the sun had fallen to earth.’ Her older daughter was a fortunate woman.

‘You’re sure? You’ve searched?’

‘The entire property. I knew she did not want to wed, but I had hoped…’

She had hoped marriage would turn her younger daughter into a normal girl. She’d been a pretty blonde-haired, blue-eyed child, but they had left the court when she was five and, during the years of exile, she had become a different creature. Shoulders too wide and breasts too small for beauty, only her singing voice marked her as a woman.

It was Solay who garnered Alys’s attention. Beautiful Solay, who understood what it meant to be a woman and what women must do to survive. Jane, poor, strange child, never did.

So Alys had made no demands, trying to make up for losing their life at court. She let Jane play with horses and books, more boy than girl, until, too late, she realised that her daughter had become fit for nothing else.

Alys sighed. Yet another of her failures as a mother.

‘I would never have forced her into marriage,’ Justin said. ‘Surely she knew that. But I thought if she met him, they might, she might…’ He shook his head. ‘Solay warned me. I should have listened.’

‘The bridegroom comes next week. What shall we tell him?’

‘The truth. He will recover. My worry is Jane.’ Yet he glanced towards the stairs, as if he had already been away from Solay too long.

‘Solay must be your concern.’ She did not have to say it. For this man, there would never be a question of who was first in his life. ‘Besides, where would we look? Where could she go?’

In the spring, Alys and Jane had moved into the empty dower house on Justin’s family’s land. Until then, the sheltered girl had known nothing but the house she had lived in with her mother after they had left court.

The house Alys’s stubbornness had lost.

‘She once said she wished she were a man so she could be a lawyer and serve the King, as I did,’ he answered. ‘Maybe she went to the Inns at Court.’

Their eyes met. London. A naïve country girl would be swallowed whole.

He rose, all attention. ‘I’ll send a messenger that way. She’s been gone for days. She could be in the city by now.’

Oh, Jane. She felt her lip quiver. Alys de Weston, who had stood before the condemnation of Parliament unbowed, was afraid she was going to cry.

She bit her lip. She never cried. Not when they had charged her. Not when she had fled court with her children. Not even at the death of the King. The man she loved.

Who had called another man’s daughters his.

Jane woke, snug on a warm, dry pallet, and sighed with delight.

Normally, the hostel would have been full of men, every room shared, but the term’s start was still days away. She had a chance at privacy she would not see again to rewrap her breasts and relieve herself without fear.

What she really wanted was a bath, but that would be quick, cold and risky.

She said her prayers for Solay and her mother and started downstairs. She would spend the day reading, she decided. The hostel had a few volumes that would afford her good Latin practice.

But at the bottom of the stairs, Duncan handed her a pile of tunics and hose. ‘Wash these.’

She crossed her arms, not touching the garments in his hands. ‘Laundry’s no work for a man.’ Nor for the child of a king.

‘For a poor orphan, you’ve elevated expectations.’ Duncan dropped the clothes on the floor at her feet. ‘I told you you’d have to work for your lessons. Now do as I say.’

‘I want to talk to the principal,’ she said, lifting her chin. A man in power wouldn’t make her do such menial tasks. ‘Who’s responsible for this hostel?’

Duncan raised his eyebrows and looked at her aslant. ‘I am.’

She swallowed, grateful that her blunder had made him laugh instead of roar. From the first, this man had been nothing that she’d expected.

She tried not to think about how many ways she had insulted him already. ‘And you don’t have laundry women?’

‘We don’t waste money sending out the wash. And it’s the gaol for any women found within these walls, laundress or lady.’

Gaol. She stooped to gather the pile, shuddering. She was at this man’s mercy in a world beyond women. She’d have no one to turn to, no one to confide in and no protection if she were discovered.

‘And wash your own clothes, while you’re about it,’ he said, leaving her to grapple with the laundry. ‘You smell of the stables.’

As she grudgingly heated the water to fill the washtub, she savoured his words and allowed herself a secret smile. No women allowed, yet here she was. She had cracked their kingdom and they didn’t even know.

And yet she was still doing women’s work.

The thought lingered as she set up the tub in a sunny corner of the yard. She started to throw the garments into the water, but the coarse linen lingered in her hand, warm and alive with the smell of his body and his days on the road. She buried her nose in the fabric and breathed his scent until she sat behind him on the horse again, felt him nestled between her spread legs.

The memory made something within her run soft and wet.

She dropped the shirts in the hot water as quickly as she dropped the thought. What would Duncan think if he saw ‘John’ with his nose buried in another man’s shirt?

She plunged her arms into the wash water, the damp heat taking her back to the birthing room. What had happened to Solay? The babe must have been born days ago. Something weighed heavy in her chest, reminding her of what she had lost. She would never see her family again, never even know if they were safe.

She sent up a prayer for them as she swirled, scrubbed and pounded the clothes, then wrung out the rough linen, and stretched his shirts and braies on the grass beside hers.

The water, still warm, beckoned. Her skin ached to be clean. She had dipped her hands in the Cam River once or twice, but after she saw a dead sheep float by, she did not touch the water again.

She looked over her shoulder. She was in a secluded corner, shielded by the wall around the property and the vines that had grown up during the summer. She might not have such an opportunity again.

She skinned off her chausses and stepped into the tub, closing her eyes to savour the feel of the leftover water swirling into her hidden crevices, washing away the dust of the road and the stables.

Her tunic floated on top of the water, hiding everything below. She snuggled lower with a satisfied sigh. Just a moment. She would take just a moment’s ease.

Are ya still breathing?

A harsh question Duncan had asked. And a harsh man, when his eyes carried anger’s thunder.

He had offered his help, so she had expected that as soon as she asked, he would take ‘John’ as a student. If she had known she’d be working as a servant and rele-gated to studying Latin again, she might never have risked being so near him and his all-too-perceptive grey eyes.

She had told him how hard she had tried. She had explained how unfair and difficult it all was. But all he could say was Are ya still breathing?

He was no more understanding than the rest of the masters she had met. Well, when she was a clerk to the King, he’d be sorry he had been so rude. In fact, since the King was coming to Cambridge, she would introduce herself. The King might even—

‘Little John! What are ya doing in that tub?’

Chapter Four

Her eyes flew open.

Duncan stood across the yard, hands on hips, fresh shaven, the menacing set of his jaw exposed.

Startled, she started to stand, then, just in time, crouched lower. Her tunic would cover her, but damp as it was, it would mould to her body, making it obvious she was missing what would make her a man.

‘Come no closer,’ she said, waving him away. ‘I’ve finished your wash.’

‘I see that. That was not my question. I asked why you’re sitting in the laundry tub.’