‘I cannot, Margaret. Even if I wished it, I go on, I go on, burning down like a candle until the snuffer comes.’ He looked vaguely around the shadowed room. ‘Where are my clothes? I should dress and be about my duties.’
He began to rise and Margaret pressed a hand to his chest, almost recoiling from the heat of his skin as her bare palm touched him. She felt a different ache then, for the man she had married but who had not yet pressed her down. He didn’t struggle against her touch and she caressed his face, soothing him even as it stoked fires inside her. He closed his eyes and lay back against the bolsters and pillows. She grew bolder, uncaring that his doctor still stood outside.
Margaret leaned forward and kissed her husband on the neck, where his throat was revealed by the open nightshirt. His chest was white and hairless like a boy’s, the arms slender. He smelled of pungent powders, of sulphur and bitter lime. His skin seemed hot to her lips, almost as if she had taken a burn.
Holding her breath, she let her hand fall to his lap and shifted closer on the bed, so that she leaned over him and was able to kiss him more firmly on the mouth. She felt his lips tremble and his eyes opened, staring into hers with wonder. He gasped into her mouth as she stroked him. She saw muscles twitch and she gentled them with her hands.
‘Lie still and let me tend you,’ Margaret whispered into his ear. ‘Let me bring what peace I can.’
She felt her voice grow hoarse as her throat tightened and a flush stole its way across her face and neck. Her touch seemed to bring him calm, so that she dared not step away to undress. Instead, she kept her lips on his as her hands worried at ties and fastenings, yanking cloth away from her shoulders, baring them. It was impossible. She was terrified he would speak to forbid her, or rise and throw her off. Yet her dress would not come undone! She pressed her head against his neck as she wrestled with it, so that her hair draped across his face.
‘I …’ he began, the word smothered instantly as she kissed him again. She could taste the blood that rimed his lips from the leech wounds, like iron in her mouth.
With one hand she pulled her dress up and tore at the cloth beneath, so that her buttocks were revealed. A stray thought came to her mind of the learned doctor opening the door at that moment and she stifled a giggle as she put one bare leg across her husband and tried to bring about a joining beneath the mass of garments. When she dared to look at Henry, he had his eyes closed once again, but she could feel the proof that his body at least was willing. By God, she’d seen enough animals do this small thing over the years! The ludicrousness of her situation made her want to laugh as she shifted and pressed down, trying to find a position that would work.
It happened suddenly and unexpectedly, so that they both gasped and Henry’s eyes snapped open. He seemed vague even then, as if he thought it was a dream. Margaret found herself panting as she held his head in her hands and felt his hand reach down to grasp her bare thigh. She could feel the roughness of the bandages touch her skin, making her shudder. She closed her eyes and blushed as an image of William surged into her mind. William who was so very old! She tried to banish the picture, but she could see him in the yard at Saumur, strong and laughing, his hands rough and powerful.
With her eyes tight shut, she moved on her husband as Yolande had described in the garden of Wetherby House, sharing breath and heat and sweat and forgetting about the doctor’s impatience behind the door. When Henry cried out, Margaret felt her body shiver in response, thin tremors of pleasure amidst the discomfort that somehow promised much more. She felt her husband rise away from the pillows, his arms and back growing hard as he held her, then going suddenly limp, so that he fell back like a dead man. He breathed shallowly as he lay there and Margaret felt warmth flood her loins.
She rested her head on her husband’s chest until her breathing eased and she felt the soreness that was no worse than she had expected. The frantic images of William faded with vague stirrings of guilt.
She smiled as she heard Henry begin to snore lightly and when the door opened and the doctor looked in, she did not open her eyes until he went away, not even to see his appalled expression.
Jack Cade looked around at the men who waited on his orders. Paddy and Rob Ecclestone were there, of course, his trusted lieutenants who could hardly hide their delight at the way things were going. He’d realized early on that a mere rabble of angry farmers would have no chance at all when the sheriff of Kent sent out professional soldiers. The answer had been to train the refugees from France until they could stand and kill in a line, and march, and do as they were damn well told by those who knew.
‘Will someone fetch me a flagon of black, or do I have to talk dry?’ Jack said.
He’d learned it was a good idea to get his drink early in the taverns they used each night. His men had a thirst and the barrels were always dry by the time they moved on. Every morning had them groaning and complaining about their splitting skulls, but Jack didn’t mind that. If he’d learned anything fighting in France years before, it was that Kentish men fight better with a little ale inside them — better still with a skinful.
The widow behind the bar was not at all happy about men drinking for free. Flora kept a good house, Jack had to admit. There were clean rushes on the floor and the planks and barrels were worn smooth with years of scrubbing. It was true she was no kind of beauty, yet she had the sort of square-jawed stubbornness Jack had always liked. In happier times, he might even have considered courting her. After all, she hadn’t run, not even when two thousand men came marching up the road towards her tavern. That was Kentish, right there. Jack waited patiently while she filled a pewter cup and passed it to him to blow off the froth.
‘Thank you, my love,’ he called appreciatively.
She looked sourly at him, folding her arms in a way he knew from every boarding house and tavern he’d been turned away from over the years. The thought made his spirits rise. They couldn’t turn old Jack Cade out into the night any longer, not now. With huge gulps, he sank the beer to the dregs and gasped, wiping away a thick line from the bristles around his mouth.
The inn was packed with around eighty of those he’d singled out in the previous few weeks. For the most part, they were men like himself: heavy in the shoulders, with good strong legs and big hands. Every one of them had been born in Kent, it went without saying. With the exception of Paddy himself, Jack was more comfortable with those. He knew how their minds worked, how they thought and how they spoke. As a result, he could speak to them, something he was not accustomed to doing, at least not in crowds.
Jack looked round at them appreciatively, all waiting on his word.
‘Now, I know some of you buggers don’t know me well, so you’re perhaps wondering why Jack Cade tapped you on the shoulder. You’ll know I don’t like to talk the way some do, either, so you’ll know it’s not just froth.’
They stared back at him and Paddy chuckled in the silence. The big Irishman was wearing new clothes and boots, taken fresh from one of the towns they’d passed and better than anything he had ever owned before. Jack let his eyes drift until he found Rob Ecclestone at the back. That was one more suited to standing in the shadows, where he could keep an eye on the rest. Ecclestone seemed to make the men uncomfortable when he was seen stropping his razor each morning — and that was a good thing, as far as Jack was concerned.
‘Fetch me another, would you, Flora?’ Jack called, passing the cup. ‘All right?’
He turned back to the crowd, enjoying himself.
‘I’ve had you buggers running and marching to mend your wind. I’ve made you sweat with pruning hooks and axes, whatever we could find for you. I’ve done all that because when the sheriff of Kent comes against us, he’ll have soldiers with him, as many as he can find. And I ha’n’t come so far to lose it now.’