In the Master's Bed. Blythe Gifford

look? Where could she go?’

      In the spring, Alys and Jane had moved into the empty dower house on Justin’s family’s land. Until then, the sheltered girl had known nothing but the house she had lived in with her mother after they had left court.

      The house Alys’s stubbornness had lost.

      ‘She once said she wished she were a man so she could be a lawyer and serve the King, as I did,’ he answered. ‘Maybe she went to the Inns at Court.’

      Their eyes met. London. A naïve country girl would be swallowed whole.

      He rose, all attention. ‘I’ll send a messenger that way. She’s been gone for days. She could be in the city by now.’

      Oh, Jane. She felt her lip quiver. Alys de Weston, who had stood before the condemnation of Parliament unbowed, was afraid she was going to cry.

      She bit her lip. She never cried. Not when they had charged her. Not when she had fled court with her children. Not even at the death of the King. The man she loved.

      Who had called another man’s daughters his.

      

      Jane woke, snug on a warm, dry pallet, and sighed with delight.

      Normally, the hostel would have been full of men, every room shared, but the term’s start was still days away. She had a chance at privacy she would not see again to rewrap her breasts and relieve herself without fear.

      What she really wanted was a bath, but that would be quick, cold and risky.

      She said her prayers for Solay and her mother and started downstairs. She would spend the day reading, she decided. The hostel had a few volumes that would afford her good Latin practice.

      But at the bottom of the stairs, Duncan handed her a pile of tunics and hose. ‘Wash these.’

      She crossed her arms, not touching the garments in his hands. ‘Laundry’s no work for a man.’ Nor for the child of a king.

      ‘For a poor orphan, you’ve elevated expectations.’ Duncan dropped the clothes on the floor at her feet. ‘I told you you’d have to work for your lessons. Now do as I say.’

      ‘I want to talk to the principal,’ she said, lifting her chin. A man in power wouldn’t make her do such menial tasks. ‘Who’s responsible for this hostel?’

      Duncan raised his eyebrows and looked at her aslant. ‘I am.’

      She swallowed, grateful that her blunder had made him laugh instead of roar. From the first, this man had been nothing that she’d expected.

      She tried not to think about how many ways she had insulted him already. ‘And you don’t have laundry women?’

      ‘We don’t waste money sending out the wash. And it’s the gaol for any women found within these walls, laundress or lady.’

      Gaol. She stooped to gather the pile, shuddering. She was at this man’s mercy in a world beyond women. She’d have no one to turn to, no one to confide in and no protection if she were discovered.

      ‘And wash your own clothes, while you’re about it,’ he said, leaving her to grapple with the laundry. ‘You smell of the stables.’

      As she grudgingly heated the water to fill the washtub, she savoured his words and allowed herself a secret smile. No women allowed, yet here she was. She had cracked their kingdom and they didn’t even know.

      And yet she was still doing women’s work.

      The thought lingered as she set up the tub in a sunny corner of the yard. She started to throw the garments into the water, but the coarse linen lingered in her hand, warm and alive with the smell of his body and his days on the road. She buried her nose in the fabric and breathed his scent until she sat behind him on the horse again, felt him nestled between her spread legs.

      The memory made something within her run soft and wet.

      She dropped the shirts in the hot water as quickly as she dropped the thought. What would Duncan think if he saw ‘John’ with his nose buried in another man’s shirt?

      She plunged her arms into the wash water, the damp heat taking her back to the birthing room. What had happened to Solay? The babe must have been born days ago. Something weighed heavy in her chest, reminding her of what she had lost. She would never see her family again, never even know if they were safe.

      She sent up a prayer for them as she swirled, scrubbed and pounded the clothes, then wrung out the rough linen, and stretched his shirts and braies on the grass beside hers.

      The water, still warm, beckoned. Her skin ached to be clean. She had dipped her hands in the Cam River once or twice, but after she saw a dead sheep float by, she did not touch the water again.

      She looked over her shoulder. She was in a secluded corner, shielded by the wall around the property and the vines that had grown up during the summer. She might not have such an opportunity again.

      She skinned off her chausses and stepped into the tub, closing her eyes to savour the feel of the leftover water swirling into her hidden crevices, washing away the dust of the road and the stables.

      Her tunic floated on top of the water, hiding everything below. She snuggled lower with a satisfied sigh. Just a moment. She would take just a moment’s ease.

       Are ya still breathing?

      A harsh question Duncan had asked. And a harsh man, when his eyes carried anger’s thunder.

      He had offered his help, so she had expected that as soon as she asked, he would take ‘John’ as a student. If she had known she’d be working as a servant and rele-gated to studying Latin again, she might never have risked being so near him and his all-too-perceptive grey eyes.

      She had told him how hard she had tried. She had explained how unfair and difficult it all was. But all he could say was Are ya still breathing?

      He was no more understanding than the rest of the masters she had met. Well, when she was a clerk to the King, he’d be sorry he had been so rude. In fact, since the King was coming to Cambridge, she would introduce herself. The King might even—

      ‘Little John! What are ya doing in that tub?’

      Chapter Four

      Her eyes flew open.

      Duncan stood across the yard, hands on hips, fresh shaven, the menacing set of his jaw exposed.

      Startled, she started to stand, then, just in time, crouched lower. Her tunic would cover her, but damp as it was, it would mould to her body, making it obvious she was missing what would make her a man.

      ‘Come no closer,’ she said, waving him away. ‘I’ve finished your wash.’

      ‘I see that. That was not my question. I asked why you’re sitting in the laundry tub.’

      ‘Well, you’re the educated one.’ Her heart skipped faster. From fear? Or something else?

      Without the beard, she could see his mouth clearly, the top lip sculpted, the lower lip unexpectedly full. She wondered how they would feel against hers.

      A dangerous idea when she was sitting half-naked in a tub of cooling water. ‘Can ya not see I’m taking a bath?’ She mocked the lilt of his accent.

      ‘Do you truly think me such a miscreant that I’d have you bathe in the laundry tub?’

      He was in one of his testy moods. Bathing in leftover laundry water was eminently sensible and many house-holds did it. ‘I don’t see how my bath says anything about you at all.’

      He blinked, then gave her a sideways smile. ‘You may succeed in logic after all, Little John.’ He started across the grass. ‘The University’s Proctor frowns on the bathhouse, but since you’ve been sleeping with the horses, he might make an exception.