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

cried Agnes, staring up the road. Towards us rode a horseman. A black cloak flew behind him like a dusty sail. His mount’s hide boiled with sweat. He rode without skill; as he reached us, his horse swerved blindly and struck the groom’s beast, sending horse and rider plunging towards the hedge. He stopped to ask no pardon, but spurred on hotly and galloped off the way we had come. The groom struggled out of the ditch, shaking off broken blossoms.
    ‘Pox take you!’ he yelled after the departing figure.
    Agnes said wonderingly: ‘Was that not Master Daunger?’
    Yes, ’twas Daunger. He had swivelled his chalky whey-face and hanging lip towards us for an instant. Daunger, a dangerous name. Do-this-night-as-I-have-said Daunger. I kept silent.
    ‘Is the clerk for Grafton again, then?’ Agnes murmured. ‘More pious instruction for my lady?’
    ‘Not today,’ I only whispered. She had been like a spray of may-bloom, ready to flower. Could the clerk be her lover? I did not know what it was that lovers did that was so pleasant and nice and full of sin. Yet whatever it was I knew that chaste Elizabeth did it not. Agnes stood in the stirrups and clapped her hands, and I forgot all about Master Daunger, and cried with her: ‘Look! the May Pole!’
    Stoney Stratford opened to us round a bend in the road. Every house door stood wide. More hawthorn, scattered with blossoms, stood in great branches at every porch. Garlands of meadow-sweet and cowslips hung from window and door frame. Folk thronged the narrow street, laughing, singing, crowned with flowers, with periwinkle, wild rose and young ivy; and in the square, with a breeze lifting its twelve gaudy streamers, the great ash-pole grew upwards to the sky. Dressed from tip to ground with wreaths of marsh-marigold, primroses and may, it stood winking in the sun. On its head lay a ring of royal lilies. ‘Worship me,’ it said.
    Children ran to meet us. One pushed a nosegay into my hand, violets clustered with harebell and eglantine, still dew-damp.
    ‘Oh, Agnes,’ I said, lost in delight. ‘Look, Agnes!’
    Agnes’s eyes darted about. She flirted her lashes at an elderly merchant, pursed her lips as a band of young clerks rolled by, arms linked. Flushed with ale, they bawled a chant far from holy. ‘How wicked the world is!’ she said, with dancing eyes.
    We halted on the green, where there seemed to have congregated a host of young men. As we dismounted one fell in courtly pose upon his knee, clutched his heart and feigned a swoon. At the comical look on his face I burst out laughing. Agnes swept by with a hauteur worthy of the Duchess. I looked up at the ring of faces. A youth in a blue doublet held a buttercup under my chin and guffawed. I heard: ‘Great Jesu, that maiden’s hair!’ and ‘But maiden-hair’s a herb, Will, and she’s a flower, yea, by the Rood.’ ‘Deflower, say you?’ A great burst of mirth, and Agnes’s cross, seizing hand. ‘Stay close.’ I caught the tail of a voice, strange and yearning, like the look in John Skelton’s eyes. ‘Little and young, I grant you. But by my mother’s soul, she lights my fire!’
    So I was conscious of the hot stares of men. Their looks were like lances, to prick and delve, to consume me. I knew the object of their joy. It rippled about me, hued like autumn fire, cloth of gold, a beech-nut, taking the colour from the flowers, laughing back at the sun. I say this in no conceit, for from my hair’s lustre came more fear than pride, that day.
    Agnes whispered: ‘Come! We’ll lose the others, or we’ll be put in charge of Tom and Dick!’ and tugged me, squirming, through the crowd to the far side of the green, where men were shooting at the butts and slender wands, and the sweetmeat booths were set up cheek by jowl with the ale-wagons.
    ‘We’ll have wine,’ she decided. I bought honey cakes to go with the thin sour brew. I watched Agnes drinking, her full creamy throat tipped back. Pink drops escaped