Read Online The Dandelion Seed by Lena Kennedy - Free Book Online Page B

fretting and fussing all the time.
    ‘God, what an ass, what a damned silly fool,’ said Dour Thomas to himself as he sat waiting. His patience was wearing thin.
    At last the finished product appeared. Robert Carr the courtier, the King’s favourite playboy, paraded up and down like a mannequin. ‘What think you, Overbury? Does the coat set well at the back?’ he asked his secretary, a well-spoken and unusually intelligent young man. Overbury ran his hand over the shoulders of Robert’s plum-coloured velvet coat. ‘’Tis fine,’ he said. ‘The embroidery goes well with the vest.’ He seemed to have a genuine fondness for Robert, having known him as a youth.
    Robert had been a fair-haired page at the court in Scotland, a pawn for every vice in that court of James. For a long while he had enjoyed being the favourite but he seemed to have been on edge lately as though things were on his mind. And he certainly had not been the same since the bewitching Frances had come on the scene. Thomas wondered if Robert was jealous. That type of man did not like women much. ‘They are all a funny lot, I will be glad to get away,’ he thought darkly.
    ‘All right, you can go, Mayhew,’ Robert squeaked at last. ‘But stay in your lodgings. It is a devil of a job to find you sometimes.’
    Thomas left with a sigh of relief. Taking deep breaths of air, he walked back beside the river to those stuffy lodgings and all that scent which sickened him. His lodgings were in a tall three-storey house facing the Thames, and belonged to a shipping merchant. Thomas occupied the two big attic rooms on the top floor, sharing them with two other young men who were only at home when the debts mounted up on them. When that happened they would never leave the house for fear of creditors catching up with them. At the moment the two of them had joined a hunting party and so were away. They would probably return, Thomas thought, with plenty of money in their purses, made, no doubt, on wagers and card playing. Then they would settle down for a while.
    Thomas rarely dined at home. He usually went out or was simply away on his travels. But it was difficult to obtain lodgings in the crowded streets of London, so having paid the lease on these humble dwellings, Thomas thought it wise to stay put. It was just the place to hang his hat but that was all, he told himself.
    Taking off his boots, he lay flat on the bed thinking over the events of the last few months. Marcelle’s shy little face swam before him. It was strange how close he felt to this young girl. He longed to make love to her but so rare was a sweet young virgin in this world of vice, he felt he could never dishonour her. He could marry her, he was free to do that, but would she want him? He was nearly thirty and she just fifteen. He thought of the weddings he had seen at court – forced marriages between young people who hated each other standing before the altar of God swearing to love honour and obey. He remembered the wedding of Frances Howard and Robert Devereux and remembered how they had fought and kicked each other only half an hour after the wedding ceremony had ended, how the great Howard family had taken Frances home and the Essex kin sent Robert overseas. The grand world outside had known nothing of these happenings; it was only the serving class to which Thomas belonged, that saw the true colours of these pampered darlings of the royal court of the King. And it had distressed him. No, if ever he married it would be for true love. He would just wait for Marcelle to make up her own mind.
    He lay staring up at the rafters, going back to the day when he had been at Theobalds, the great home of the Cecil family. It was on that occasion when the King had come to England from Scotland and everyone had waited eagerly for a change for the better after the years of Elizabeth’s tyrannical rule. Thomas recalled how he had stood bare headed with the rest of his master’s retinue. The sight