The King's Mistress by Gillian Bagwell Page B

Majesty,” Henry grinned.
    A knock at the door heralded the arrival of dinner. Once the kitchen boy was gone, Jane made to serve Charles, but he waved off her attentions and begged her and Henry to sit and eat with him.
    Riding pillion for so many miles was wearying, and Jane’s body ached in unaccustomed places. The men appeared exhausted as well, and hot food and warmed wine brightened their spirits and revived their energy.
    “Do you know”—Charles smiled over a leg of chicken—“I begin to think that I may be safe after all. Only one more day of riding, and we shall be at Bristol.”
    “And nothing will hinder us from getting you there, Sire,” Henry said, “though it costs my life.”
    Charles looked from Jane to Henry. “I can only hope that I will see the day when I can honour you as I wish for the help you have given me. I have been much humbled by the love and care shown to me by so many of my people these last days. Most of them have been poor folk with little enough for themselves, but they’ve risked their lives to keep me safe, and offered all they have. Indeed, one of them gave me the shirt off his back, quite truly.”
    He plucked at his shirt, now grimy from the ride but clearly new.
    “The people love you, Your Majesty,” Jane said. “And pray for your return.”
    But none of them love you so well as I do,
she thought, watching the flickering firelight play on his face.
    Charles looked around the room, cosy with the fire crackling, its light chasing the shadows away, and smiled.
    “A bed to sleep in tonight! I will ne’er take such comfort for granted again.”
    “Of course you shall have the great bed, Your Majesty,” Henry said, “and I will take the pallet.”
    “Even a pallet would be welcome,” Charles laughed, “and a great improvement from doubling myself up in priest holes, and a day spent sleeping in a tree.”
    “In a tree?” Jane asked in astonishment.
    “Yes,” Charles said. “When I was at Boscobel, the Giffards feared I would be discovered if I stayed within, even in the priest hole, so I spent a long day in an oak some little way behind the house, my head resting upon the lap of one Colonel Carlis, who I think you know?”
    “Yes, an old friend,” Jane said.
    “Cromwell’s men were searching in the woods nearby, and it scarcely seemed possible that we should escape detection. And yet despite all that, I was so tired, having gone three nights without sleep, that I slumbered, my head resting on the good colonel’s lap.”
    “Will you tell us of the fight at Worcester, Your Majesty?” Henry asked, pouring more wine for all of them. “We’ve only heard pieces of the story, and none from any who know what happened so well as you.”
    Charles’s eyes darkened, and Jane thought of the stories of confusion, despair, and horror she had heard from the soldiers fleeing from the battle.
    “It was a desperate venture, in which people were laughing at the ridiculousness of our condition well before the battle. We had been three weeks marching from Scotland, with the rebels pursuing us, when we limped into Worcester. We knew Oliver was on his way with thirty thousand men, and I had but half that number, hungry, sick at heart, already worn out, many lacking even shoes to their feet.”
    Jane thought of the ragged survivors on the road past Bentley the day after the battle. It was a wonder any had survived at all, she thought, if they had begun in such desperate condition.
    “We needed every advantage we could get. We blew up the bridges leading to the town, dug earthworks, built up the fort, and waited. When at length Cromwell came, he fired upon the city, but made no further move for three days.”
    Charles was on his feet now, pacing. Jane could imagine only too well the tension of the young king and his soldiers, knowing the battle would come but not when, having to stay vigilant and ready despite their exhaustion and apprehension.
    “He was waiting, you see, for