Page 44 of The Rose at Twilight

“No, madam, I fear not.” Alys hated her then as she had not hated her since leaving Sheriff Hutton.

“But this state of affairs is unacceptable, Lady Merion. It is our … our desire that you will inform your new husband at once of this dismal lack, and beg him to hire a tutor for you. Since you will need leisure for your lessons, until such time as you believe your skill sufficiently improved to warrant a request that we permit you to play for us again, you may be excused from such duties in our bedchamber as you have hitherto performed.”

“May I have leave to retire now, madam?” Alys asked grimly.

Desire or command, it made no difference, for they were equal when spoken by the king’s wife, and it was no minor matter to have been denied entrance to Elizabeth’s bedchamber.

There was small hope that Sir Nicholas, as ambitious as she knew him to be, would not be displeased with the situation.

Elizabeth was taking full revenge for Sheriff Hutton, and Alys wanted time to think.

But Elizabeth said, “There is no cause for haste, Lady Merion. Lady Emlyn, do you take the lute now and show her the level of skill to which she must aspire.” When Alys had returned the lute, she added, “Prithee, return to your place on the dais, Lady Merion, until such time as we choose to dismiss you.”

Redder than ever, and seething inside, but knowing she dared not reveal her fury, Alys sat down again on the edge of the dais, aware that every eye in the room must be upon her and wishing she knew such an effective way to make Elizabeth squirm.

She sat stiffly erect until Lady Emlyn had plucked her last note, but when Elizabeth said serenely that she thought it time they all retired to their chambers to prepare for the evening meal, which she would take that evening in the great hall with the king, Alys leapt to her feet, her countenance betraying her relief.

“Lady Merion,” Elizabeth said gently, “we did not know you were so eager to depart, but you have surprised us in other ways before now, have you not? In truth, we confess we had not known you were so well resigned to this marriage of yours as it appears you must be. Knowing, after all, that you had hoped to wed Sir Lionel Everingham, so handsome, so …” Breaking off with a dismissive gesture, she said, “But ’twould be ungracious of us to suggest that your new husband is in any way the lesser knight. ”

“By my faith, madam,” Alys said, turning to look her right in the eye and speaking with unfortunate clarity, “since we are both wedded to Welshmen, I had expected you to rejoice with me.”

A hushed silence filled the room, and for a moment Alys thought the royal serenity would falter, but it was only a moment. Then Elizabeth said, “Indeed, madam, we do rejoice.” Handing her needlework to Lady Emlyn, she arose with her dignity apparently unimpaired and left the room.

In the corridor, moving swiftly toward the stairs with the other ladies, Madeline grabbed Alys’s arm with enough force to leave bruises and hissed into her ear, “Are you mad? How did you dare to speak to her so?”

“Shhh,” Alys hissed back. “Come with me to my chamber.”

“But what if Sir Nicholas is there?”

“I do not care if he is, but he will not be. He rode out this morning on some stupid duty or other, and was in such haste that he did not even pause to bid me farewell.”

“Well, I told you husbands were not assets to one’s life,” Madeline retorted in her normal tone, causing more than one nearby head to turn toward them.

They spoke no more until they reached Alys’s chambers, but finding that neither Jonet nor the maidservant who helped her had arrived yet, Alys said without hesitation, “I should like to kill Elizabeth! There now, it is said. What am I to do now?”

“She does not like you,” Madeline said, hoisting herself to sit upon the bed and nearly tumbling off again when she tried to free the elegant feathered fan, dangling by a gold chain from her girdle, which she had somehow managed to sit upon.

“She knew I could not play well,” Alys said. “She did the whole business on purpose to pay me back for …”

“For what? Here now, what is this?” Madeline demanded.

“’Tis nothing.”

“Oh no, my friend. This is Madeline. You will tell me or I do not leave this room.” She leaned forward expectantly.

Alys grimaced, but short of putting Madeline bodily out of the room, there was not much else to be done but to tell her. She made the tale as brief as she could, but Madeline’s mouth hung agape when Alys finished.

“You slapped Elizabeth of York! Marry, were you crazed?”

“She lied through her teeth about Richard. She infuriated me. Oh, I do not want to talk about it anymore. Where is Jonet? By my faith, that woman ought to know when she is wanted.”

“That woman is here,” Jonet said with chilly calm from the doorway. “It is bad luck to sit upon a bed, Mistress Fenlord.”

“So it is,” Madeline agreed, sliding to her feet and looking at her fan.

“I have lost two feathers from this pretty bauble. I leave you now, Alys, for I must dress for supper if we are to attend her grace in the great hall. But we will talk again later,” she added with a look that made it clear she meant to have the long tale before she was done with the matter.

No sooner had Madeline gone than the maidservant arrived, so Alys had to endure Jonet’s near-silence until the wench had been dismissed.

But as soon as the door had shut, before Jonet might speak her mind, Alys said, “I should not have spoken as I did. I was unkind, but I was angry and did not think.” It occurred to her that she could not explain the matter in greater detail without speaking improperly about Elizabeth; and although she had certainly discussed her with Jonet in the past, she decided that Sir Nicholas was right.

Now that Elizabeth was the king’s wife, it was unwise, perhaps even unsafe, to criticize her to anyone.

Thinking of Sir Nicholas brought his image into the room, however, and she silently cursed Elizabeth again for making it necessary for her to tell him about the incident of the lute, if not about the exchange she had had with Elizabeth afterward.

She did not encounter him until that evening after the tables had been cleared.

By then the room was buzzing with talk of the king’s intent to begin a progress to the north in the near future.

Elizabeth would not go with him since it was still hoped that her condition was too delicate to sustain a journey, and Alys heard more than one person suggest that Viscount Lovell, if he had not already broken sanctuary, might choose to do so to lead an assault on the royal party.

It was not the first time she had heard such talk, for there had been rumors before she fled north, but now she had all she could do not to reveal, by expression or word, her own knowledge of Lovell’s whereabouts.

No sooner had she turned from one such conversation than she was accosted by Sir Lionel Everingham, and she realized at once that his sister Sarah was not alone in believing that he had been cheated.

His polite, inconsequent discourse did not conceal his hunger for her, and Alys knew not whether to be complimented or dismayed by it.

So determined was she to parry his bold looks and the tendency he had to stand closer to her than was comfortable, that she did not attend as she might have to his actual words, until he mentioned his lute.

“I am proficient with the instrument, my lady—indeed with many instruments,” he added, leering and shifting his weight in a lewdly suggestive manner. “I should find it an extremely great pleasure to provide you with the lessons you require.”

She stared back, at a loss for what to say to him.

“My wife requires lessons from no one but me,” Sir Nicholas snapped, startling Alys nearly out of her wits when he spoke from right beside her. Possessively, he put his arm around her.

Sir Lionel bowed. “Your servant, sir.”

Sir Nicholas nodded, saying, “You will excuse us, I know. ’Tis but the second day of our marriage, and I have been denied my wife’s companionship for the entire day.”

“To be sure,” Sir Lionel said, but his expression was not particularly amiable when he walked away.

Alys turned to Nicholas, words of gratitude upon her lips, but one look at his set expression warned her that she had not been rescued after all but had only fallen from the pot into the cook fire.

She made no protest when he led her from the room, nor did either of them speak before they reached his chambers.

Then, shutting the outer door with a snap, Nicholas turned and gave her a shake, demanding, “What devilment has got into you, madam? Whatever did you think you were about?”

“He accosted me! I did not invite him.”

“I do not speak of Everingham; I speak of Elizabeth.”

“That was not my fault!” she cried, pulling away from him.

“It was Elizabeth. That chitty-faced bitch knew I could not—” When his hand flashed up to strike, she broke off, jumping back out of his reach and saying hastily, “I cry pardon, sir! I should not have spoken so, but she made me angry and you are blaming me for a scene that she created. She said I had married beneath my station. She … she compared you to Sir Lionel!”

His hand fell. “I know.”

“All that, as well? What prating-Jenny dared to tell you?”

“The king.”

“Oh.” She bit her lip. “Was he angry?”

“No, our Harry has a sense of humor, fortunately, and he enjoyed the bit about our both being Welshmen. But you said ‘as well,’ madam. What more is there for me to know?”

Alys was too indignant to reply to that question. “I do not think it at all funny that she compared you to Sir Lionel, but who has dared to carry tales of Elizabeth to the Tudor?”

“Elizabeth herself,” he said flatly.

“Elizabeth! But why, when the tale discredits her?”