Chapter Seven A Bargain
Chapter Seven
A Bargain
In the morning, sleet plinked against the window of the many-bedded room, which was now deserted, except for Anne and the woman.
Sleet in May, only a month from midsummer, Anne thought.
She shuddered to think of George’s head, slicked with ice on a pike on London Bridge.
She didn’t suppose her father would pay to get it down.
He had his own reputation to protect, and her sister Mary’s.
Anne hoped he’d also be thinking of Elizabeth.
She didn’t think her Uncle Norfolk would pay either, since he’d presided over the jury that convicted George.
Both men, her father and her uncle, were busy trying to stay in an impetuous king’s good graces.
Even so, she hated to think of George’s head out there, alone and cold.
Anne stretched. Her body ached from sleeping on the hard floor.
The woman sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her.
Anne could see, in the daylight, that she was quite comely, slender and pale, a dash of freckles across her nose and cheeks.
She looked younger than Anne, but not by as many years as Anne had assumed last night.
Her hair was pinned neatly atop her head beneath a white wool cap.
She must have been awake long enough to tidy herself. How long had Anne slept?
The woman was staring at her. “Your collar,” she said. “ ’Tis odd. I saw you fidgeting with it last night. Why are you wearing it?”
Anne remained silent, not wanting to reveal more than was necessary. She moved her fingers to the collar, checking that it remained in place. It did.
“I can tell you’re a lady,” the woman went on. “Your shoes. They are too fine. Even with the muck covering half their beauty, I can tell they were expensive.”
What did the woman want? She’d been kind to take Anne in last night, brave to defend her from John in the dark street, but now she looked at Anne appraisingly, as though taking inventory.
The woman shifted off the bed and stood over her, extending a hand to help her up.
Anne took it and shimmied out of the gap. A fire flamed in the hearth.
The woman motioned to a wooden plate with a dry-looking slab of cheese and two hunks of bread, set on a table beside the hearth. She must have brought these up. “Would you like some?”
Anne nodded. She was famished. She grabbed a hunk of the bread, broke off half the cheese in her hand, and shoved the food into her mouth, chewing hungrily.
“You don’t talk much,” the woman said. And after a pause, “Have you left your husband?”
Anne thought about the story she might tell this woman. She couldn’t tell her the truth, but she wanted to tell a lie that would be near the truth, a story that would be easy to tell and to remember. The woman sat on the bed, and Anne joined her.
“Yes,” she said. “I have left my husband.” True, for how much more could you leave a husband than to die?
“Did he hurt you?” The woman eyed Anne’s collar.
“Yes,” Anne replied again. True, for hadn’t Henry ordered her beheading?
“My good husband loved me. When we met, he was married to another, but then she died. Upon his wife’s death we wedded.
” Sort of true—Katherine had waited until three years after Anne’s marriage to Henry to finally die.
“He had already bedded my sister, but I stayed pure for him.” True.
The woman raised an eyebrow. Everyone loved a scandalous story.
“I thought he loved me. I loved him. I bore him one child, a daughter, who I must find and keep safe.” Here, her story ebbed further into lies, for though Anne missed Elizabeth terribly, she had no intention of trying to retrieve the child, who was off at Hatfield Palace, guarded and secure.
Better to leave her where she was. Once Anne killed Henry, Elizabeth would be queen, and well taken care of.
Still, a story like this, of a beaten and cast aside mother trying to rescue her daughter, might curry this woman’s sympathies.
The woman looked at Anne expectantly. She wants to know what happens next, Anne thought, pleased with herself. I’ve intrigued her.
“Though he loved me passionately, he believed malicious rumors that I’d taken a lover, though I had not.” That was all true. Anne had only ever lain with Henry; she’d had no other lovers. Anne gestured toward the silk collar around her neck. “He tried to kill me.” True.
The woman touched Anne’s arm. The touch was warm and gentle, pleasant. She felt herself relax. How many stories like this had the woman heard before? Anne wondered. How many of the women sleeping in this room last night had turned to prostitution after mistreatment at the hands of their husbands?
“The collar is covering up bruises then,” the woman said. “Did he strangle you?”
“Yes,” Anne replied, letting the woman fill in the blanks in the fabricated story.
The woman let out a long breath, sat back, and gazed into the fire. “ ’Tis a sad tale, my lady. You’ve been woefully mistreated.”
“I need to cross the bridge,” Anne said. “To find my daughter”—she hurried to fill in the lie—“before he does her harm. She’s just a babe. My husband, lecher that he is, has found a new mistress. I’m sure he plans to wed her and cast my daughter aside, a bastard orphan. I must retrieve her.”
Anne looked at the woman. Like many Englanders, her eyes were an airy blue, as though she’d been stitched together from the sky itself.
Her gown was clean. Her shoes were clean.
She wore a cloak tied neatly at her neck.
Though she worked in a brothel, she was well kept and well spoken.
She was cunning, sympathetic, quick with a knife, of sound body. She’d be useful to have as a companion.
“I never should have crossed the river in the first place, but I was taken in by a deceptive wherryman, who saw me running through the streets, alone, and offered to ferry me to safety. He took the little bit of money I had on me and abandoned me on this side of the river.” This new lie spun out of Anne so easily, a reason for her to be on this side of the river, a story that made her sound vulnerable, in need of protection, that it surprised even her. “Can you help me?”
The woman’s gaze stayed on the fire. She was quiet, contemplating.
“No,” she said at last. “I have my own troubles to attend to.”
“Last night, you were so adept with your blade,” Anne said, seeking to flatter the woman. “I do not know these parts. I’m an easy mark.”
“Had you lain with that man?”
“The man from the river?”
“Yes.”
Anne thought about her answer. “No. In a moment of weakness, I did let him touch me, and I touched him.”
“And did you steal his money, as he accused?”
“Yes,” Anne replied. “I did.”
The woman scoffed and shook her head.
“I needed it to pay the bridge toll,” Anne explained. “So I can save my daughter.”
“How much did you take?”
“Two shillings and a few pence.”
“Two shillings and a few pence! You can’t do that sort of thing to men like him,” the woman replied. “You stole a month’s wages from that man. Did you really think he wouldn’t come after you?”
Anne shrugged. She hadn’t really given the man much thought at all. She’d gotten what she wanted from him and left him behind.
“You’re a bit foolish, I think,” the woman said, brushing the breadcrumbs off the bed as she spoke, “though you are a woman of high position. But I suppose that’s how your kind are.”
“My kind?” Anne asked. She didn’t like the woman’s tone. In other times, she’d have slapped a commoner for speaking to her with such impudence.
“The nobility,” the woman replied. And to clarify, as if she thought Anne too dense to understand, “Lords and ladies, with your fine clothes and shoes and carriages. With your hot meals and servants. Everything is done for you, so you don’t learn to survive on your own.”
“I can pay you to help me cross,” Anne said, not liking the direction this conversation was going.
The woman’s comments stung; Anne prided herself on her independence.
The woman was probably jealous of her wealth and station.
Perhaps a richer reward would entice her.
“In my husband’s house, there are many jewels.
I can pilfer one,” Anne lied, “give it to you, then you could sell it. You wouldn’t have to work here anymore.
You could afford a servant, hot meals, rent a fine house. ”
“Ha!” the woman said. “What good would a jewel do me? When your murderous husband discovers its absence, he’ll send men looking for it, and I’ll be arrested trying to sell it, and have my hand lopped off for theft.
I’ve no interest in bleeding to death on the pillory stage, nor in dying from a festering wound should I survive the axe’s swing. ”
Anne winced.
“I see my words upset you, my lady. Do I speak too plainly? After all, what do fine people like yourself know of working women’s struggles, of punishments, or pain?” The woman paused. “Though I suppose the queen was beheaded. Did you witness the execution?”
Anne shook her head. “No,” she said. “I fled the night before.” That was a lie that Anne wished were true. “My master slept beside his mistress in our bed, mistaking me for dead upon the floor where I lay, pretending. ’Twas then that I roused myself and fled. I did not see the queen perish.”
“Nasty business,” the woman continued. “Though I heard she’d lain with a hundred men.
The king’s own friends, a common musician.
” She lowered her voice. “Even her own brother. Can you imagine bedding your own brother? Mine’s hairy and stinks of eels and rancid tallow.
Spends all day walking on stilts through the fens to empty his eel traps.
I wouldn’t bed him if he paid me a hundred pounds. ”