Free Traitor's Kiss by Pauline Francis Page A

are almost the same age? I thought that…”
    â€œI look older,” he replied. “It’s the life I’ve been forced to lead.”
    My rage quietened. I sank to the steps, deep in thought. Icy water seeped into my velvet shoes. How much wiser Francis seemed than me. How little I understood of the world and the way it worked.
    â€œWhen my mother found herself with child, just before your birth, your mother sent her to friends in France,” he went on. “She left me there to come back to court. She didn’t expect your mother to die so soon, not when your father…our father…loved her so much.”
    â€œWas your mother with her when she died?”
    â€œOh, yes. But she could not bear to stay here afterwards. She was afraid of protesting your mother’s innocence too much. She would have done it – but for me. So she returned to France and we lived on the kindness of friends until your father died.”
    This talk of our mothers was so natural, so welcome that it soothed me. Longing for mine washed over me like the water at my feet. What would I give to talk to Alys for an hour, a minute, a second?
    â€œWhere does your mother live, Francis?” I asked. “Is it far?” I smiled at him for the first time.
    He was lost for words. I tried to help him, sensing that he was ashamed of his poverty. “It does not matter if you live in a simple cottage or worse, a hovel in the mud… Kat could fill my pomander with fresh lavender and—”
    Francis laughed, the lusty laugh of my father, and so loud that one of the guards moved forward. Then he began to mutter, as if to himself. “Nothing can prepare you for what you’ll see and hear. The devil is King there …” His voice faltered. I thought that shame still stopped him from naming some wretched place.
    â€œWhere is she, Francis?”
    He might have struck me with his oar, for he whispered a word so foul that it stopped my breath.
    He whispered, “Bedlam.”
    Had I misheard? My heart thudded. Who had not heard of Bedlam – St Bethlehem’s Hospital for lunatics, by Bishops Gate in London Wall, where poor souls shrieked and cried the devil’s nonsense day and night?
    Pity drained from me. I was the one who shrieked. “So you’ve chosen to mock me, Francis, like the man in the woods, like Jane, like Mary. You’re as steeped in spite as they are. You’ve preyed on my longing for my mother, just because you couldn’t know your father. It’s—”
    â€œListen to me—”
    â€œ Listen ? I’ve listened all my life and what have I heard? Lies. And now – more lies.” I stamped my foot, cursing. “Cranmer won’t tell me the truth. My stepfather won’t, although he tempts me with titbits. I thought your mother would.”
    â€œShe will… ”
    â€œHow can she, when she’s lost her wits?”
    â€œListen. Bedlam’s full of women who must be silenced because they’re seen to be troublesome,” he said. “There are wives who accuse their husbands of being unfaithful, and daughters who accuse their fathers of…lewd acts. Yes, put such women in Bedlam and they’re silenced. Let them shriek and shout all day and rattle their chains all night and nobody listens. Don’t you understand? You can speak the truth in Bedlam and nobody believes it.”
    â€œAre you saying that your mother isn’t mad?”
    â€œYes…although it’s a wonder she isn’t, with the sights she’s seen. We came back from France after your father died last year, to offer you the silver box, to offer you the truth. But my mother reckoned without her father. He feared that she’d bring shame to the family by seeking you out, by speaking out. He put her in Bedlam – her own father! He refused to recognize me as his grandson. So I fend for myself. This is why I work like this, to earn