Free A Love Most Dangerous by Martin Lake Page B

twice weekly ritual. It was
one of the few personal duties which Frost could truthfully say he enjoyed. He
imagined this was how the court painter Master Holbein must feel when he
conjured the faces of lords and ladies upon the canvas. Painstaking, thoughtful
and with the realisation that, to a tiny extent, he had some real power and
mastery over his patron and master. Just as Holbein had the power to make the
King look exalted or grotesque so he, Nicholas Frost, had the power to make the
King hear better or to deafen him for life.
    Of course, were he do the second his own life would
end in a spectacularly gruesome manner. It would not be wax which would be
picked out of Frost's body, it would be his innards and his vital organs. He
paused a moment in his work and regretted that the thought had ever entered his
mind.
    'I've nearly finished, Your Majesty,' he said. He
worked away for a few moments more and then stepped back, very painterly, to
examine his handiwork.
    'I've finished. Shall I get Your Majesty's breakfast
now?'
    'In a moment, Frost,' the King said.
    Frost watched as the King rose to his feet and leaned
backwards, stretching his spine in a most pointed fashion.
    'We feel fatigued this morning, Frost,' he said. 'The
fatigue of a huntsman who has ridden over hills and dales until he has cornered
his quarry in a deep, dark vale.'
    He beamed at the groom. 'Do we look fatigued?'
    'Slightly, Your Majesty. Yet triumphant as well, as a
skillful huntsman should.'
    'That is good. That is how it should be.'
    The King looked at his servant. The fool has no idea
to what I am alluding. And if he did, what would he think? Would he be envious,
would he be impressed? Would he wish that he were King so that he could ride
any choice filly that took his fancy? A filly as beautiful as Alice Petherton? Oh
yes, I'm certain that he would.
      He clapped Frost upon the shoulder. I'm right, he
thought, the foolish man has not the slightest notion of my latest conquest.
    Frost looked up with bland expression. He has slept
with her, he thought, the young girl, Petherton. That must be the reason for
this latest nonsense. Huntsman indeed. Bombastic, conceited monster. Devourer
of children. The poor sweet girl, what a trial she has ahead of her.
    'Bring in my food,' the King cried. 'I am hungry this
morning, hungrier than I usually am.'
    'Naturally, Majesty. Hard exercise is good for the
digestion. And riding, so the physicians tell me, is the best exercise to prick
the digestion.'
    The King stared at Frost a moment, his mind suddenly
perplexed and suspicious. Then he dismissed the thought and his mind ran once
more on how ignorant a servant could be and how such ignorance was almost
always the thing which best commended them.
     
     
    CHAPTER TWELVE
    Maids with no Honour
    13th October 1537
     
    'I hate the bitch,' Dorothy Bray said. 'I hate her
more than I can say.'
    Philippa Wicks strode on down the corridor, ignoring
her friend's words, indeed barely hearing them. She was too engrossed in her
own fretful thoughts, brooding that the situation she had set up with such care
had come undone so swiftly and so spectacularly.
    'Shut up, do,' she snapped, even though she had not
heard what Dorothy had said.
    'I was only saying how I hate Alice Petherton,'
Dorothy said in an aggrieved tone. 'I thought you hated her as well.'
    Philippa did not see fit to answer. Her face gave all
the answer necessary.
    'I'm thinking,' Philippa snapped. 'Be silent while I
think.'
    They paced on in silence, Dorothy fretful that she had
somehow angered her friend, Philippa fuming with a visible intensity. She was
intent on framing her revenge but instead her mind's eye kept returning ever
and again to the scene at breakfast.
    How had the little chit bested her? How had she undone
the embargo she had placed on talking to her? So red were her thoughts she
could not focus her mind on true analysis of the situation. She could not, in
truth, bear to think that Alice Petherton