The Innocent by Posie Graeme-Evans

Author:Posie Graeme-Evans [Graeme-Evans, Posie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780743272223
Amazon: B001B2CIEM
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2005-06-13T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Dank, darkening October had turned to November and now cold flurries of sleet-ridden wind off the river made for a bleak morning as William Hastings, the king’s closest friend and palace chamberlain, finalized plans to move the court to Windsor for the Christmas Court.

He was looking forward to the change, though it meant a great deal of work for his office. It was a fact that most courtiers liked Windsor more than London, for even though the castle was still a formidable fortress, it seemed more intimate somehow than the great drafty barracks of Westminster. Hastings was determined to make this Christmas Court as merry as possible to distract the king from the increasing tension of his relationship with Warwick. And if it was true, as was rumored, that the queen might be pregnant again, then there would be double cause for the king to celebrate, and his court with him.

So there was much to do, and most mornings found William out of his bed before dawn, even though the evening revels rarely finished until the dead part of the night. A monk once told him that if he wished to banish the aftereffects of wine, he should drink as much water as he could before he slept.

This advice had sounded like certain suicide, because everyone knew that London water was foul and a potent source of contagion since so much filth poured into the Thames. But this clever monk had added good advice. “Boil it first, sir, boil it and have the steam condensed off the pot with a cold metal plate.

That is what you must drink—the water from the steam. It is very pure.” So it had proved, and while there were those who scoffed and said that drinking water was a sure way to the Devil, that’s what William put his lack of headaches down to—drinking his metal water.

This cold morning he sat in his room in the fine new black-and-white house at Saint Paul’s wharf, less than ten minutes down-river from the palace by fast barge, comparatively clearheaded, while a constant stream of court servants ran in and out with papers for him to sign: bills of instruction and command that would put the court on the muddy roads and autumn river to Windsor within the next few days. But for now there was a lull and the chamberlain stretched mightily and strolled over to his casements dressed only in his hose and linen undershirt, casually scratching the recent flea bites on his belly.

Thoughts chased through his head as he looked down on the gray silent river rushing past below. The queen didn’t like him, that he knew, but then, what wife liked her husband’s best friend? They’d had a history together, he and Elizabeth Wydeville, before she married the king. When she’d been plain, widowed Lady Elizabeth Grey, her husband’s meager lands had marched with his and he’d had occasion to help her with preserving her son Thomas’s inheritance from her dead husband’s grasping mother, the dowager Lady Grey.

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