The King's Mistress by Gillian Bagwell Page A

as the men scrambled to avoid being trampled by the horses.
    “Have a care, you clotpole!”
    “Poxed idiot!”
    Jane made to step forward, but Henry’s hand on her arm stayed her. Charles glanced around as if in astonishment, his mouth gaping open.
    “Beg pardon, your worships.”
    His accent was thickest Staffordshire, as if he had grown up in the country around Bentley Hall. A burly sergeant, tall but not so tall as Charles, shoved him hard and glowered at him.
    “You whoreson fool! Do you need teaching manners?”
    He pulled back his fist, and Charles flinched as though in fear.
    “Kick him like the dog he is, Johnno,” another soldier called, and there was a chorus of laughs.
    Charles plucked his hat from his head and hung his shoulders in sheepish apology.
    “I’m sorry, your worship. Most sorry, sir.”
    Johnno stood sneering at him, as if deciding whether to strike him or not, but then shrugged.
    “Well, get on with you, then. And let it be a lesson to you for next time.”
    “Oh, yes, sir,” Charles said, tugging at his forelock and grinning like a child reprieved from a whipping. “Thank you, sir.”
    Nodding at the muttering soldiers to either side of him, he ambled towards the stable with the horses.
    “I still say you should have thrashed him,” a second sergeant called out to Johnno.
    “Not worth dirtying my coat.”
    The men laughed, and turned their attention back to whatever they had been doing when they were interrupted.
    “W ITH ALL THESE SOLDIERS I’ VE ONLY BUT TWO ROOMS LEFT,” THE landlord said. “And not even room for your servant in the stable. He’ll have to sleep on a pallet in your room, sir.” He had witnessed the scene in the stable yard, and grinned at Henry. “Perhaps it’s just as well you keep the fool out of harm’s way.”
    They ordered food to be brought upstairs rather than going down to the taproom to eat, and by the time Jane had washed her face and hands, the men were already waiting in Henry’s room. Charles, in breeches and shirtsleeves, was lounging on a chair near the fire, his long legs stretched before him and his feet propped on a stool. He looked like a great cat, Jane thought, watching the play of his muscles beneath the linen of his shirt. There was something catlike about the glint in his eyes, too, as he gave her a lazy smile.
    “Well,” he grinned. “I reckoned that blundering among the troops would anger them so that they’d not think to look beyond their rage, and so it did. But the ostler had keener eyes. As soon as I came into the stable, I took the bridles off the horses, and called him to me to help me give the horses some oats. And as he was helping me to feed the horses, ‘Sure, sir,’ says he, ‘I know your face.’”
    Jane gasped and Henry looked at him in alarm, and Charles nodded wryly.
    “Which was no very pleasant question to me, but I thought the best way was to ask him where he had lived. He told me that he was but newly come here, that he was born in Exeter and had been ostler in an inn there, hard by one Mr Potter’s, a merchant, in whose house I had lain at the time of war.”
    “What ill luck!” Henry exclaimed.
    “I thought it best to give the fellow no further occasion of thinking where he had seen me, for fear he should guess right at last. Therefore I told him, ‘Friend, certainly you have seen me there at Mr Potter’s, for I served him a good while, above a year.’ ‘Oh,’ says he, ‘Then I remember you a boy there.’”
    Jane laughed at Charles’s impersonation of the ostler, nodding in sage satisfaction.
    “And with that,” Charles continued, “he was put off from thinking any more on it but desired that we might drink a pot of beer together. Which I excused by saying that I must go wait upon my master and get his dinner ready for him, but told him that we were going for London and would return about three weeks hence, and then I would not fail to drink a pot with him.”
    “Quick thinking, Your