Free The Green Man by Kate Sedley

accompanied me all the way to the “glade”. It wasn’t good enough on such an important occasion.’
    The man called Clement turned on her furiously. ‘Well if you know who’s stolen my best mask, you can save your reproaches for him.’ He picked up the one he had been wearing and dangled it by its strings. ‘This is only my second best. I was still hunting for the other right up to the moment of our entrance, and even so I had to go on without it. And it’s still missing.’
    The woman was immediately all concern.
    â€˜Oh, that’s too bad!’ she exclaimed. ‘It’s a beauty, that other one. I thought something didn’t look right about you. “Not enough foliage,” I remember thinking to myself at one point, but there was so much else to be worrying about, I didn’t give it more’n a passing thought. Come and speak to Matthew,’ she added, nodding towards the man counting the money. ‘If someone’s playing a stupid prank, he’ll soon give ’em short shrift.’
    They went off together, arm in arm, animosity and professional jealousy forgotten. I went back to my post behind Albany’s chair.
    By the greatest of good luck, he and Lord Hastings had been so deep in a ribald assessment of ‘Mother Earth’s’ physical charms that he had failed to notice my absence. Not so the page, who whispered in my ear, ‘And where’ve you been?’
    I spun round. ‘So you’re back, are you? And suddenly you can speak English. Well, understandable English.’
    â€˜Oh, I’ve always been able to speak English,’ Davey replied in that cool, light tone of his. ‘It’s just that I don’t always choose to. Where have you been?’
    â€˜I might ask you the same question.’
    He smiled his sweet, effeminate smile. ‘There’s no mystery about that. His Grace sent me to the kitchens to get something to eat. Unlike yourself, I don’t go wandering off on my own, but wait until I’m bidden. It’s easy to see that you’ve never been in service to the nobility. Which raises the question why exactly are you here?’
    There was a slightly contemptuous note in the young voice that flicked me on the raw. I longed to tell him the truth, but managed to bite my tongue. Instead, I retorted with equal contempt, ‘You ought to listen more carefully, Davey, when your royal master speaks. He told you, I heard him, when I first joined the household in London, that I’m his personal bodyguard. It’s my job to protect him from harm. He fears his brother’s assassins.’
    â€˜He has good reason,’ the page nodded, adding, ‘Well, mind you do protect him, or it will be the worse for you.’
    Before I could take exception to this threat, the king rose from his seat, announcing it was time for bed, and everyone else rose with him. Albany turned and beckoned to me at the same moment that his two squires emerged from a doorway at the back of the dais. Davey fetched a couple of torchbearers to light us all back to the royal chambers where James Petrie was waiting to assist his master to undress, while I took the opportunity to divest myself of the hated yellow shoes, hose and amber tunic, stripping down to my shirt and climbing in beside Albany in the massive four-poster bed. The page dragged his own truckle-bed from underneath it, assured himself that the ‘all-night’ of bread and ale had been placed on the table next to his master, pulled the curtains around us and bade us goodnight. Donald Seton and Murdo MacGregor likewise made themselves scarce, leaving the bedchamber for the ante-room where they both slept.
    Albany was in buoyant mood and disposed to talk. He was delighted with his reception by the English nobles and by the way in which King Edward had embraced him before the feast, hailing him with all the familiarity of a fellow monarch. I think