Dragon's Court. Joanna Makepeace

for weeping yesterday when she had encountered Richard Allard in the courtyard, was now, in fact, making itself felt. She dared not look at her parents and Ned lest she burst into a storm of weeping and she was in all haste to ride off quickly, but Richard Allard’s stupid and needless precautions were delaying her so that she thought she would scream at him.

      He lifted her into the saddle of her palfrey and tightened her saddle straps and checked her girth himself.

      He straightened up, smiling. “We cannot have you falling from the saddle before we are a mile or so from Rushton,” he commented.

      “I assure you, Master Allard, I am a perfectly competent horsewoman,” she retorted irritably.

      “I’m sure you are, Mistress Anne, but let us not leave anything to chance. You want to arrive at Westminster in good fettle,” he replied cheerfully. “You would be little use to attend Her Grace the Queen if you had injured yourself en route and, besides, I am responsible to your father for your well-being.”

      Anne gritted her teeth in irritation and forced a smile as her mother and father came to her side to kiss her farewell.

      Her mother reminded her softly, “Remember what I told you. Keep your sharp tongue in check and mind Master Allard on the journey.”

      Her father said little. His fine mouth was held in a hard line and she knew he was deliberately holding back further doubts about this journey and its eventual conclusion. He hugged her tightly and nodded at last to Richard Allard to give the order to ride from the courtyard. Anne turned in the saddle and, through a blur of emotional tears, saw her parents and Ned waving her off. Even Ned’s dog was barking furiously with excitement. She took a final glimpse at the dear, familiar shape of the manor house and then they were off, riding through the gatehouse.

      Mary Scroggins was riding pillion behind the younger of the two men at escort who took the rear of the little company. The other, an older archer who had ridden with her father to Redmoor, near Bosworth—and possibly to East Stoke also—rode slightly ahead while Richard Allard rode close to Anne in the centre. Each of the men led one of the mules.

      It was a fine, bright day as Richard had predicted, the sun watery and rather low, lacking in warmth but still gilding the remaining leaves upon the trees and sheening the water on the manor fishpond as they passed.

      Once upon the road Anne’s spirits lifted and she rode joyfully, gazing around with eager interest at the road ahead and the now-fallow fields stretching out to either side of them. Richard Allard was whistling softly between his teeth and she glanced at him sharply. He was interfering with her pleasure in the peace of their surroundings, for, so far, they had encountered no one else upon the road. He caught her glance and grinned mockingly.

      “I am sorry, Mistress Anne, it is a habit of mine.”

      “I wish it were not,” she said huffily. “It is irritating, to say the least.”

      He shrugged lightly but desisted. She felt unaccountably ashamed of her churlish mood and said, hesitantly, “I suppose you have travelled this way many times before.”

      “Not so many. Normally I pass along the Great North Road from Yorkshire, but I detoured this time to see your father. It was well I did so for I have the privilege of escorting a lovely lady to her destiny.”

      “I wish you would not tease me, sir,” she said uneasily.

      His twinkling grey eyes softened. “I think you are already suffering the onset of homesickness pangs.”

      “I’m not a baby, but,” she admitted wryly, “I hadn’t realised quite how hard it would be to leave Rushton for an unspecified period and to part from all my loved ones.”

      “I doubt it will be for long,” he consoled her.

      “You think I shall not please the Queen?”

      “No, no, I am sure you will. It is just that you will soon be formally betrothed and the Queen will not keep you in attendance then, when your proper place will be by your future husband’s side.”

      Her blue eyes widened and a scarlet flush dyed her cheeks. “My father has said that it is for this reason that he has sent me to Court?”

      His teasing manner had deserted him as he said, quietly, “Your father did indicate to me that he hoped soon to see you settled. Enjoy your last months of freedom.”

      “Did you ever meet the Queen when you were at Court?” she enquired, anxious to change a subject which was becoming increasingly embarrassing to her.

      “No, I did not. The Lady Bessy, as she was then, was living at Sheriff Hutton in Yorkshire with the young Earl of Warwick.”

      Anne’s blue eyes grew moist with pity. “The poor young Earl! My father has often spoken of him. All his life seems to have been passed in a state of imprisonment. How he must long for freedom, confined in the Tower.”

      “He was not imprisoned at Sheriff Hutton during his uncle’s reign,” Richard Allard enlightened her. “He was living quite happily with others of the royal household and was being educated and prepared for his military training. It has only been since the accession of King Henry that he has been kept under close guard.”

      “Do you think it is true what they say of him, that he is slow witted?”

      “I can well imagine that perpetual imprisonment will have left his mind blunted against the general experiences and slight blows and disappointments that beset the rest of us.”

      She was silent for a while, contemplating the sad truth that it was a misfortune to be born the son or nephew of a King. Uneasily she remembered that it was her own deep desire to sample the excitement of court life which had brought her to this journey; at the end of it, she would come into contact with those lordly beings who intrigued and fought for high places, even to the detriment of their own kinfolk. Her mother had warned her that life there would not be easy.

      “Master Allard?” she asked and he turned from his watchful survey of the trees and hedges that bordered the road, mindful that such vegetation could harbour footpads, to face her again, one eyebrow lifted quizzically.

      “Mistress Anne, do you wish to stop and rest already?”

      “Certainly not,” she snorted. “I told you I am an experienced horsewoman. No, I just…wanted to know—did you find it difficult at Court? Was the work strenuous or unpleasant and the King hard to please?”

      “King Richard could be.” He grinned. “Usually he was fair and courteous in his demands, but he could be very demanding on occasion and his Plantagenet rage showed itself then.” He smiled down at her. “Life at Court is tiring. You will find yourself constantly on your feet and at the whim of the monarch at all hours of the day or night but, of course, you are strong and healthy and will expect that.”

      “Were you—beaten?” she enquired anxiously.

      “Not often—” his grin broadened “—but I, too, can display a temper sometimes and was punished for it. I was very young,” he said dismissively.

      “But you liked the King?”

      “I loved him,” he said quietly, “as did my father and your father.”

      He looked ahead as they were coming to a crossroad and excused himself to take the lead for a while.

      Anne watched his back thoughtfully. How well he rode, not showily but competently and easily, as her father had showed her, so as to be sparing of his own body and easy on his mount. Many women would find him attractive, she thought, as she had many times since her mother had revealed to her her father’s wish concerning a future betrothal.

      Richard Allard would doubtless make some woman a tolerably reasonable husband, she conceded, capable in running his small demesne, probably patient and undemanding, but he would be seldom home and—how dull it would be on that desmesne for a wife left to her own devices much of the year, caring for her children and the household. It was a lot her own mother