Her nurse swatted her affectionately.
‘I know how to make the beast with two backs, you little minx. I know how to find the sap and how to make it rise, too. None better!’ Diota stood with her hands on her hips – a big woman with breast and hips ample enough to make her waist seem small. When Diota laughed, she filled a room. And there was something indescribable to her manner that led men to find her desirable, even when she belittled them.
The Queen smiled. ‘I never doubted it.’
‘But the King-’ Diota paused, and frowned. ‘I’m sorry, mistress. It’s not my place.’
‘Now you have me going, you coarse old woman. What do you know?’
‘No more than half the court knows. That the King incurred the anger of a woman. And she cursed him to father no children.’ Diota’s voice grew quieter as she spoke. It was treason to speak of a curse on the King.
Desiderata laughed. ‘Nurse, you speak nothing but nonsense. He has no curse. Of that, I can assure you.’ She beamed. ‘When he came back from the battle-’ She stared dreamily off into time.
Her nurse smacked her on the rump. ‘Get dressed, you strumpet. If you’ve kindled, you might as well enjoy these summer kirtles while you still have a flat tummy and a maiden’s breasts.’ But she squeezed her mistress’ hand. ‘I meant no harm,’ she said.
‘Do you think I hadn’t heard the rumour?’ Desiderata asked. ‘Heard it, and heard other whispers, too. Two years in the King’s bed and no baby?’ She whirled on her nurse. ‘Ugly stuff. Hurtful, ugly rumours.’ She looked away, and her face settled into its habitual look of open pleasure at the world. ‘But my powers are as great as any challenge. Or curse.’ Her voice lowered a little, and Diota shivered. ‘Who was she, Diota? This woman who cursed my King?’
Diota shook her head. ‘I’d tell you if I knew, mistress. It was long ago. When he was young.’
‘Twenty years ago?’ the Queen asked.
Diota shrugged. ‘Perhaps, sweeting. I was nursing you, not listening to court gossip.’
‘And who got you with child, that you were my nurse?’ Desiderata asked.
Diota laughed. ‘Weren’t exactly the King, if you take my meaning,’ she said.
Desiderata laughed aloud. ‘My pardon, I meant no such thing, and I am being indiscreet.’
Diota put her arms around her mistress. ‘You’re scared, sweeting?’
Desiderata shivered. ‘Since the arrow struck me,’ she said, ‘the world seems darker.’ She shook herself. ‘But my baby will make it right.’
Diota nodded. ‘And your tournament?’
‘Ah!’ said the Queen. ‘My tournament – oh, my sweet Virgin, I had forgotten! I will be big as a sow at Pentecost.’ She shrugged. ‘Well, some other girl must be the Queen of Love. I’ll be a mother.’
Diota shook her head. ‘Are you growing up, pipkin? The knights will still come for you – not for Lady Mary or any of your other girls, pretty as they are.’
‘I hear that the Empress’s daughter is the most beautiful woman in the world,’ the Queen said.
‘Well,’ said Diota, ‘she will be in a few months, anyway.’
‘Oh, fie!’ said Desiderata, and smacked her.
And they both gave way to laughter.
Harndon – Edmund the Journeyman
Edmund the Journeyman – as his peers now called him – sat on a workbench with his feet dangling. He was facing three younger men, all senior apprentices. His anxieties were mostly caused by the fact that for two years he’d eaten and slept with them, and pulled pranks, stolen pies, wrestled, and been bested or triumphed, swaggered sticks, swashed and buckled-
And now they worked for him, and he wasn’t sure how to reach across the sudden gulf between them.
‘I see three ways of approaching the problem,’ he said. ‘We can cast them, like hand bells. We can cast blanks, and bore them – and that’s dead slow.’
The youngest, a white-blond boy named Wat, but whom every other apprentice called ‘Duke’ for his aristocratic looks, laughed. ‘You mean we’ll bore it while you sit in the yard and think lofty thoughts.’
Edmund had learned a thing or two from Master Pye and he looked mildly at Duke, and said nothing.
‘Sorry!’ said Duke, in the same semi-demi-mock-rueful tone he used with the master.
‘The third way is to build something like a barrel of iron staves, and hoop it, and forge weld the whole.’ Edmund held up his first successful model. ‘Everyone look at this.’
Sam Vintner, the eldest, held the octagonal tube for a few breaths. ‘It failed,’ he said flatly.
Edmund sighed inwardly. ‘It failed after twenty shots. My forge welds weren’t good enough.’
Sam pursed his lips and nodded. ‘Do it on a mandril?’ he asked.
Edmund had to bite a comment. He didn’t like having his work questioned. But if he slapped Sam down now- Still, he was human. ‘Of course I used a mandril,’ he said.
Sam shrugged to show he meant no harm. ‘A red-hot mandril? To keep the heat?’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Edmund, intrigued.
Sam grinned. ‘I’m making this up as I go along. But it stands to reason, don’t it? You need the welds to be as strong and smooth inside as out, right?’
Edmund nodded, already thinking through to the end of the argument. ‘In fact, the welds only have to be strong and smooth inside.’
The middle apprentice took an apple out of his back and started eating.
‘Tom?’ asked Edmund.
Tom shrugged. ‘Just tell me what to do,’ he said.
‘Talk about the project,’ Edmund said. ‘That’s what we’re doing. When you are an apprentice, mostly no one asks your opinion; the more senior you are, the more your master will consult you.’
Tom nodded. Took another bite of apple. ‘Sure, boss. I’ll bite. Why not cast ’em?’
Edmund had the first one he’d cast. He handed it around. ‘Bronze,’ he said.
All three boys groaned. Bronze cost twenty times what iron cost.
‘Cast them in iron,’ Tom said.
Edmund chewed on the idea for a moment. ‘I’ve never cast anything in iron,’ he said. ‘Have you?’
All three apprentices shook their heads.
Edmund shrugged. ‘I have heard cast iron is brittle. I’ll ask Master Pye.’
‘And I imagine that, if you cast them, the bore will be rough when you want it smooth,’ said Duke.
Tom finished his apple and threw the two small bits of the core he’d left into the forge fire.
Edmund shook his head. ‘Let’s start with a heated mandril,’ he said.
The boys all nodded.
‘Tom, you and Duke make a mandril. Here’s my old one. One inch in diameter, no taper. Best make three.’
‘Has to be steel,’ said Tom.
Edmund shook his head, stung. ‘Of course it does.’
‘It’ll deform with heat,’ said Tom. ‘And if it’s hot enough to keep up the temperature in the welds, it’ll end up welded to the barrel staves.’
Edmund was beginning to see why Master Pye had been so willing to part with Tom. ‘That can probably be controlled by careful judgement,’ he said. ‘And a little judicious use of water or oil.’
‘Sure,’ said Tom, by which he pretty obviously meant, Wait and see. I’m right.
Edmund ended the day feeling that Mr Smyth’s hundred gold leopards might be harder to obtain than he’d expected.
But in the evening, he dressed in good wool and linen, hung his buckler – all steel, burnished like a lady’s mirror – on his belt with his sword – also his own work – and after preening in Mistress Pye’s glass for a moment, he walked out into the evening air. Summer was on the wane, and darkness was coming earlier – sad news for all working folks, for whom long summer evenings meant relaxation, warmth, and gossip.
He crossed the square to his sister, who stood with four other girls. They fell silent as he approached. Anne – his favourite, although nothing was settled, as one might say – smiled at him, and he returned her smile. She had full lips and large eyes; a kirtle that fit a little more tightly than most girls’, in a fine burgundy. She sewed for her living, and was already fully employed, running shirts and braes for Master Keller, the tailor, to half the court. Her white linen shift had fancy threadwork at the neck and cuffs, but all her patient labour didn’t catch his interest as much as the creamy white tops of her breasts and the swell of her hips.