The Queen's Bastard Read online

  “Thank you, my lord,”replied Robert with surprise. He’d no idea that Cecil had even known of his and Kat’s friendship. But in that same moment, watching Cecil’s shadowy figure fidget in the darkness, Southern knew unquestionably that the Queen’s closest councillor was party to the secret that had bound him and Kat together in the last years of her life. Robert waited for Cecil to continue. The discomfort of the Secretary was so extreme, however, that the pair stood in silence for an embarrassingly long time.

  Finally Cecil spoke. “Your son …”

  “Arthur,” replied Robert quickly to assure the man that they were riding along the same path of mind — that he did not suppose Cecil referred to his firstborn, John.

  “Yes, Arthur,” said Cecil. Robert thought his voice was as haunted as his eyes would have been, had there been light enough to see them. “I helped Kat Ashley to … remove the child from the Queen’s …” He could not go on.

  “You have no reason to fear for his welfare, my lord. All this” — Robert Southern indicated the Chase with a sweeping gesture of his hand — “was gifted to me as reward for my taking him in, and I am more than grateful.”

  “He seems well and happy,” said Cecil, “and a true artist on the back of a horse.”

  Robert Southern winced at the recent memory of Arthur’s bloody wounds, and a bolt of guilty pain shot through him.

  “But is he … does he feel in any way … different?” queried Cecil.

  “Something in him knows that he is different from us in our family. And as he grows I think that knowledge will grow stronger. But I assure you he knows nothing of his true lineage.”

  “I have a son named Robert,” said Cecil almost wistfully. “He is being trained for service to his Queen. His mother and I love him more than life.”

  “My lord,” said Robert Southern gently, “know that Arthur was a great gift to me. I do love the boy as if he were my own flesh.”

  Cecil’s arm went round Southern’s shoulder, and even in the dark Robert could feel the gratitude flowing like a great circular river between them.

  “You must keep me informed of him,” said Cecil. “If there is ever anything he needs …”

  “Thank you, my lord. It does my heart good to know there is someone else in this world who cares for Arthur.”

  As the two men strolled back out into the torchlit yard they did not say, but surely felt, that Kat Ashley, for all her faults and weaknesses and the sin of taking God’s will into her own hands, had indeed chosen wisely and done well by the Queen’s bastard son.

  All the members of the royal progress were finally gone. Maud was in the Great Hall standing over the servants, shouting orders to set the room back to right. Robert entered and in a quiet voice directed the workers to retire for the night, thanking them heartily for the fine effort they’d made that day. They wasted no time and beat a hasty retreat before Maud could stop them.

  “Robert!” she said irritably, “I wanted it done tonight! I’ll not have —”

  “These people are exhausted, Maud, can you not see that? Let them have their rest and they will finish tomorrow.”

  “Well, it will not be you having to look at the mess tomorrow. You’ll be out in your greenwood.” She spat the last word as if it were poison in her mouth. Then she began angrily folding up the long carpets she had laid on the trestle tables, using her fingernail to scrape off bits of food spilled on them. There was something frantic in her movements, and her voice was tinged with acid.

  “I’ll tell you something, Robert Southern. Your son Arthur is in a pot of hot water now. How dare he defy me? How dare he humiliate me in front of the Queen and make me out a liar! I’ve punished the little brat for his disobedience, but there’s more where that came from, you best believe it. And the next time I send him to his room he will stay there if I have to tie him hand and foot to the bedposts!”

  Maud was so absorbed in her words and work that she did never notice her husband standing like a tall mountain, dark storm clouds coalescing round its peak.

  “And that horse of his. I’ll not have him —”

  “Maud.” It was a single word spoken amidst a venomous stream of invective, but Robert’s tone was such that his wife stopped her work suddenly and turned. She was startled to see that he now was looming above her. Robert Southern was still as he gathered up the pieces of his anger and strength, some from many years past, others from the deepest rivers of his soul.

  “I will speak to you calmly, Maud, and clearly so that you should know my meaning and I shall never have to speak these words again. Arthur may not be your son, but he is mine.”

  “And he has bewitched you, that’s the truth. You think very little of that extra finger of his, but I see the Devil in that boy, and he has blinded you!”

  Robert Southern reached out and grasped Maud by the hair at the back of her neck and pulled her face close to his.

  “I fear you are not yet understanding me, Maud. What I want you to know is that from this day forward, for every hand you lay on that boy, I will lay ten of the same on you.”

  “You would not,” she said contemptuously.

  “Oh, but I would,” he said, and tightened the grip on her hair, twisting it till she cried out in pain. “So, are we agreed, Maud?”

  Her eyes flashed with the hatred of the powerless.

  “Are we agreed?”

  “We are agreed,” she said finally through clenched teeth, and Robert released her. Furious tears filled her eyes but she did not dare to speak. Instead, holding his gaze defiantly, she straightened her gown and her hair, then turned and strode from the room.

  Robert Southern stood alone in the Great Hall of Enfield Manor, feeling for the first time in his life a truly honorable man.

  Seventeen

  By the time of my fourteenth year I was, if not an enthusiastic student, an adequate one. In Enfield Towne there was a free grammar school, and tho my Mother wished to hire us children private tutors, my Father thought such a plan too grand and the grammar school a fine enough institution for his boys education. Fine enough in deed! We were made to speak naught but Latin all day long, from six till eleven in the morning, and one to five in the afternoon. I was taught to write a fair hand, to cypher and cast accounts. We had every day our prayers and a good bit of Scriptural studies, reading from King Henrys Bible, and arguing with Calvinistic fervor its passages and doctrine. We studied its maps and descriptions of the Holy Land and Garden of Eden, and then and there I began to dream of sometime travelling to distant and exotic lands.

  The schoolmaster, one Jarrett, grudgingly named me the best at languages, crediting some inborn ability, since my diligence to their study was at best unremarkable. My gift was, he said, so distinctive and my ear so sharp he taught me French, and some Spanish as well.

  My only joy in all that education was the Greek, for it enabled me to read, as the Earl of Leicester had promised, the finest book ever writ on equitation. I found in Xenophon, that man of ancient times, such a kindred spirit that I mourned never knowing him in the flesh. For he believed as I did that gentleness with a horse was the road to greatest success. Be firm not harsh, and lose your temper never. Reward the beast when he has followed your wishes, and admonish him — but never harshly with a whip — when he disobeys. Fear of certain objects, he said, was only increased by the whip, and the horse would come to associate pain with that object which he feared.

  Xenophon taught of the art of the cavalryman, not only the proper maneuvers of battle and care of ones mount on campaign, but a way of thinking, for both man and horse. At times, in his wisdom on what might alarm a horse and how to calm him, he spoke with such a strange authority and seemed to know this animals mind so well I believed he had once himself been a horse.

  Sadly my poring over Xenophon was as close to my faithful friend Charger as I got most schooldays, except to ride him to and fro, and to quickly feed and groom him, muck his stall at night. But on Saturdays and Sundays after church
services we never left each others sight. I was all his and he mine, and we gloried in the practice of the military arts Greek style.

  We rode cross country as tho in pursuit of the enemy — never, of course, in retreat — practiced jumping streams and ditches and small stone walls, riding at speed up and down hillocks and steep slopes. In my homemade helmet and light armor we practiced skir-mishing and mounted combat. Charger trotted to within fifteen yards of the enemy and halted whilst I threw my javelin, wheeled round and allowed my imaginary second rank to move forward and do the same.

  We practiced charging home at a full gallop sword in hand, either held high, or with my body slung along Chargers neck, the blade low and horizontal. I became proficient at “taking a head.” For the enemy I used a pigs head set upon a pole. Galloping at full speed I would pierce it with a lance or shoot it with a pistol. Sword fighting on horseback I practiced with my brother John, tho he was most times otherwise occupied, and I was forced to battle with thin air.

  I thought myself a fine soldier but alas, there was no war to be fought for England. Sure there was a bloody war of religion in France, and I heard tell that some of my countrymen, mercenary soldiers of fortune, fought on the Protestant side, and others for the Catholics. But they were few, these soldiers, for the French hated us marvellously. Twas an old hatred, I learnt from Mister Jarrett, tween the English and the French. Frenchmen, he said, believed truly that the English were born with tails, and the French believed the English the filthiest people in all the world.

  I would have gladly fought for my Queen and Country had the need arisen, for I loved her truly as a subject. Since that day we had met I harbored so deep a sense of faithfulness and honor, I would gladly have died a thousand times in her service, and dreamt of the day I would take up the Earls offer and join her Royal Guard. I heard my parents and my teacher, too, speak of the Queens reign, now sixteen years since accession. How she had surprised them all with her strength of rule, good economy and aversion to war. How she had unaccountably brought peace to longtime warring religious camps. She had somehow charmed the men and women of her Court with her stately and majestic deportment, this despite her vulgar, mouth filling oaths and habit of boxing her councillors ears when angry. Twas said she was more feared than her sister Bloody Mary and ruled as absolutely as her Father Henry. And all this of a woman. That was the shock of it. None thought a female, unmarried at that, could ever rule this island and rule it well.

  Some still chafed against her. There were those who opposed her cutting down of the oak forests to build great ships. Many — mostly Catholics — disparaged her treatment of the Scots Queen. But most Englishmen heeded her laws, for they were such that only strengthened England, like wearing hats made of felt to aid the felt industry, and eating fish on Wednesdays and Fridays and Saturdays to keep our fishing industry sound.

  Meanwhile life within the Southern household had continued, and tho my lot was bettered since that day of Her Majesty and Leicesters visit, and the strengthening of my Fathers resolve, my Mothers mania had attracted other victims. Upon her departure the Queen had uttered a few fateful words, “I hope to return someday to your gracious home and hospitality.” All but my Mother accepted the phrase as no more than polite sentiment. Maud, however, interpreted it with as much seriousness as a good Christian believes the Gospel is the Word of God, and therefore determined that the manor must be smartly refurbished before the next Royal visit or the family would be disgraced beyond endurance.

  “If we fail to improve our lot the Queen will think us common!” moaned my Mother, pointing out worn places on the wooden floor planks and decrying the fact that the manor was made of daub and wattle, not herringbone brickwork.

  “We are common,” replied my Father mildly, reminding her how far up the family had risen already. But she would not listen. Despite our past we were finally proper gentry. We had had a visit from the Queen her self. The Southerns were a great family now, she declared, and must needs affirm their importance with rich tapestries and a good lot more furniture — at least one joined table, not a mere plank laid on trestles, and six joined stools. She would have oak panelling on the walls of the Great Hall, glass windows in every casement, a cushioned bench neath the window. She even demanded a new wing be built so the servants could sleep separate from our family. And rugs. Scattering the floor with rushes and fragrant herbs would no longer do. She required Turkey rugs and woven straw mats, and that was that. She would not be humiliated the next time the Queen visited, not her! My father obliged only moderately, for tho we had in class been raised to gentry, we were never the less at the lowest end of that class, and my Fathers income from his properties was no higher since the Queens visit.

  When her ranting failed to conjure up the rugs and furniture and herringbone brickwork, my Mother turned her attentions on her daughters, both of whom she was determined to marry “up.” Her success was questionable in the case of Meg. Sure Squire Crenwick was a local gentleman with some property, but he was no nobleman as Mother had dreamt. He was an old man and stone deaf at that. But Meg knew better than to argue with our Mother and went obediently to her wedding like a lamb to slaughter, and her dowry nearly broke our familys accounts.

  Alice was next, and tho she went agreeably to her private school for gentlewomen, learning the arts of embroidery, dancing, manners, treble viol and harpsichord, in addition to all housewifely chores, she secretly — to my self only — rebelled against her miserable future.

  Late one Saturday afternoon she returned to Enfield Manor after a daylong visit with her married sister at Crenwick Hall. She had brought her horse and cart back to the stable where I was putting Charger down for the night. As I brushed his still sleek body she began a litany of woe, not her own but her sisters. The old man Meg had married was too decrepit to walk properly and only shuffled about in fur slippers, but once under the bedclothes the lecher demanded all his husbandly due. Meg had tearfully complained to Alice that he smelt — foot, breath and body — that his hair crawled with enough lice to stock a parish, and when she cried with pain or displeasure in the marital act, his deafness prevented him from hearing her. Her only hope now was that she might be pregnant, for during those nine months the nuptial duties were suspended. She talked of suckling the child her self — a practice rare amongst gentleladies — knowing it would extend that period of abstinence till the babe was off the breast. Poor Meg. She was a wretched girl in every way.

  Her sad tale caused so great an outpouring of sympathy, disgust and fear in Alice and my self that a dialogue ensued — one of rare depth and detail on a subject little spoke twixt a brother and a sister. But we were well met and curious, and each having some intelligence of our own sexes nature, and knowing full well we would not receive the same from our Parents, agreed to speak freely. I had never yet lain with a woman and had only known pleasure, as all boys do, within the grasp of my palm. And of course Alice was a virgin. So as the light grew dim I lit a lantern and set a saddle blanket upon the stable floor. We sat shoulder to shoulder and pulled more blankets round us and spoke sometimes in whispers like devilish children, sometimes laughing boldly like a couple of bawds.

  I began by reporting of a book a boy had smuggled into school. Called “Aristotle’s Masterpiece or Secret of Generation,” twas in Greek, and so the boy had brought it to me, the best translator of that language, and I therefore knew its entire contents. My report to Alice, unhappily, was that that ancient scholar either knew not, or refused to share, the methods and variety of enjoyment before the act, coital positions and ways to enhance ones pleasure. True, he gave great detail and description of the male sexual organ for which we boys had little use, having the actual protuberance tween our own two legs. More attention was paid to a description of the females parts and something called clitoris, which Aristotle claimed was the seat of all venereal pleasure in women, and without which they neither desired nuptial embraces nor enjoyed them. In that dim stable I swear I saw my sister blush, a
nd that was confirmation of the truth of it.

  Alice too had had occasion to view a manual of erotic lore, but hers was Italian and therefore useful. Called “Postures,” by Aretino and Romano, it brimmed with graphic texts, numerous and most explicit illustrations, leaving nothing to the schoolgirls imagination. When Alice tried straightforwardly explaining several of the postures to me, we ended falling about in gales of laughter. We were none the less both sobered by the vastness of possibility where, before her reading of the book and then her telling it to me, we had each suffered under a misconception common to the young — that sexual congress had but one or two plain variations.

  She was quick to add, and resolved that I should clearly know, that it was not the male alone who required satisfaction but that women too suffered from a lack of such. This news did in deed interest me, and so I pressed her whereby she gave me a shock, with intelligence that a woman may be satisfied again and again in a short space of time.

  “Is that,” I asked, “what Wythorne meant when he said ‘Though a woman be a weaker vessel yet they will overcome two, three or four men in the satisfying of their carnal appetites’?”

  “Wythorne,” replied Alice tartly, “may be a fine musician, but he is a hater of womankind, so says my tutor Miss Hopewell. The truth is, if a man be wise in the ways of love, his wife should need none other.” In the silence as I contemplated that thought she continued, but shyly, “So, brother, it seems from what you say that you have not yet bedded a girl.”

  Twas my turn to blush and stammer. “I…I…well…the truth of it is, you see …”

  “I suppose you will have marked how our Mother hires only ugly servant girls, so as not to tempt her husband and sons, tho I daresay a sour puss never stopped a lad who was keen enough.” Seeing I was still cringing with embarrassment at being found out a callow virgin, she went on. “No worry, Arthur. You are young still. Time enough for the sport. John is eighteen and only took it up last year.”