We Speak No Treason Vol 1 by Rosemary Hawley Jarman Read Free Book Online

scarlet kirtle, with glowing face to match—through joy, for we were to go a-Maying, all of us down to the smallest scullion; all of us, without exception.
    ‘They will have to get their own dinner,’ snickered Agnes. For a league she jested, making me laugh with images of my Lady Elizabeth’s cherished hands cooking mutton, of her mother washing platters. I sat behind her astride the spavined palfrey, treading the road-ruts to Stoney Stratford. The day was merry. Great swathes of persil foamed in the ditches, the may-bloom hung low, and my heart lifted, through laced branches, to meet the blossom, its delicate cream and pale rose and its nested harvest of small birds, singing.
    My head was bare, save for a chaplet of primroses, for Agnes said it was right seemly for a feast-day maid to go thus, and bother the priests! The sun turned my hair to gold, to fire; I saw it, falling so bright and sheen below the palfrey’s dusty sides. My lady’s cast-off gown fit snugly, slashed a thigh’s length to reveal, under its gay russet, a glimpse of tender green silk. The neck was low; Agnes had pounched and padded my bosom to show it off. The sleeves were slit in twenty tiny fronds. Five years from fashion it might have been, but I was sore enamoured of it. And I had washed my face in May dew; nay, I had rolled in it naked, so that every limb had danced and tingled with the soft, gay tears of spring. Then I had made my lady Elizabeth ready for the day. Still pale, but with a hidden glow, like a may-bud, she had tossed aside the dark dress I offered her. ‘Away with the old black gowns!’ I dared not ask her reason, either for this or for her sudden disdain of the widow’s headgear; her choice was a small gold hennin with a high veil to match a dress, shimmering and dawn-rosy, that I had not seen before. I merely knelt to straighten the long skirt and attach the broad gold cincture about my lady’s weasel-waist. Before the sun was clear of the great oak’s topmost bough, she drove me from the chamber.
    ‘Lady Elizabeth gave me some money.’ I stretched my arm past Agnes’s cheek, to show the half-angel in my palm. ‘And wished me good fortune at the fair.’
    ‘The Duchess gave me a beating,’ she answered tartly. ‘Because I was not spry enough dressing her. Jesu, what masters! I must find me a great lord who will burn Grafton about their heads. There’s a love-spell I wished I’d tried now. I’m sick of being whipped, and cursed, and virgin.’
    ‘Don’t, Agnes,’ I whispered.
    ‘Don’t what?’
    ‘Talk of spells, love-craft. I would not see you damned.’
    She reined in to laugh like a woodpecker. ‘Well, Mistress Pope-Holy!’ she cried. ‘And what’s amiss? A little flower, a straw in the wind—all good customs, to hurt man nor beast. Hawthorn-wench, you’re as guilty as I!’
    Yea, my true love would come from the north. It was then that I began to hate the hawthorn, for, after what I had seen last night, which, though sunk deep in my mind’s pit still brought unease, my little wistful ruse ranked itself with the worst spells of all.
    ‘A great lord, then, Agnes?’ I asked, for diversion. The pony grazed. ‘Would you desert Master Silversmith?’
    She half-turned. ‘How should I do that?’ she demanded. ‘I’m his by troth-plight—no other marriage would be valid.’ The sunlight caught her dimples. ‘Besides, I lust for Master Jack right well. He’s a strong leg, a lickerish eye...’
    The groom escorting Dick and Thomas Grey ahead, came trotting back.
    ‘Would to God you wenches would cease chattering,’ he said discourteously. ‘We’ll not make Stoney Stratford before noon.’
    ‘Bite your tongue,’ said Agnes. ‘Why all the haste? You’re like my lady. She chivvied me out of the house an it were on fire.’
    ‘Yea, they seemed passing anxious to see our backs,’ muttered the groom, hauling the pony’s head out of the succulent ditch.
    ‘Why, here’s another in a hurry!’