Free We Speak No Treason Vol 1 by Rosemary Hawley Jarman Page B

court.’
    ‘Save my supper,’ I said, closing the door.
    But I got no supper that night. For from the moment I stepped into the bedchamber again, with my healing draught and words of honey, the breeze blew strong and my ship began to turn onto its course. I got no rest either, for from the instant I began to brush Jacquetta’s hair, and held up the mirror with the murmured words: ‘A queenly face, my lady, a right queenly face,’ she would have the service of none other but me. I brushed and brushed her scanty hair, and at the right moment when she looked down to see the tress laid over her shoulder I whispered: ‘Madame, it has the touch of gold.’ Lie was it none; a strand of my own lay beneath it.
    As we left the snowbound fields and came down Watling Street into Chepeside, I could not longer contain my excitement and started to ask questions, my voice raised through necessity over the bawling of the ’prentices—‘Come buy! What d’ye lack!’ and the constant clamour of church bells—the deep song of the Jesus Bells in their fat stone tower, the sweeter burden of St Paul’s near by; the yells of the chestnut and apple sellers touting for custom and the cries of the cook-knaves at each shop door. Even while we approached through the milling street past the goldsmiths and silversmiths with the banners of their gilds and patrons in lavish display over the entrance, we caught the sharp strong odour of pigmeat and brawn, spiced venison and game, an advancing gale, pungent to the nose, weighty on the stomach. St Paul’s steeple towered to half a thousand feet, monarch over the hundred other spires that pointed to Paradise. Houses huddled together, leaning dizzily, gilded and painted and bulging into the street, and the buzz of close life from within them dazzled the crisp urgent air. Shouts of song came from the taverns, the Mermaid, the Mitre, the King’s Head, while the gay signs that hung outside, blazing blues and reds and gold, had been framed overnight by an angel with frosty fingers. Down along Chepe we came, and the dwellings leaned close and hugged each other lovingly, and my joy made me believe that they, too, wished one another fair Yuletide greetings, and that in all the world, every face smiled. One great mansion soared high above the rest; in the distance I could see its mighty roofs, silvered by snow and sun. I turned eagerly to the woman at my side. All the Dowager Duchess’s ladies seemed to be larger than I, and in the swaying litter I was crushed in the corner, the end of a fur rug wrapped about my knees.
    ‘What is that building—where is it?’ I cried.
    ‘Guess,’ she said teasingly, addressing a bumpkin.
    ‘Is it... her Grace’s residence, Ormond’s Inn?’ I asked wildly. I had heard of the magnificence of the Queen’s town house, with its hangings of French cloth of gold, exquisite ornaments, where her wards were trained, and the scores of retainers awaited her occasional visits.
    She burst out laughing. ‘That is at Smithfield!’ she cried, and I felt foolish. Then, more kindly, she said: ‘Nay, over there is Bishopsgate, and the high building, Crosby’s Place.’
    ‘Crosby’s Place,’ I repeated. A fleeting disappointment rose in me. The name said little.
    ‘’Tis Sir John Crosby’s home,’ she said reprovingly. ‘He’s a very important man.’
    Still it meant naught, and how was I, no soothsayer, to know its very name would one day warm my cold blood?
    A wintry wind blew off the Thames as we approached London Bridge and, to our left, saw the chalky pinnacles of the Tower. A few kites mingled with the seagulls, swooping and tearing at objects that were spiked upon the gates of the Bridge. I looked up in interest to see what it was they attacked so merrily, and looked hastily down again in the next instant. For they were the heads of what had once been men, empty-eyed skulls with tattered hair, whipped by the wind. A bird flew carelessly past our litter, a large