I told myself it didn’t matter. Things were different now. I wasn’t the little boy who’d capered about in costumes. I was the one who’d saved the queen from the kidnap plot. I’d been beside her when we came under attack in Bridlington and she trusted me, and only me, to code her letters to the king. What was Crofts? A cocky young blade who’d ridden in the odd skirmish, then made his exit when things got a bit too dangerous. And now he was just a hanger-on, here because he had nowhere else to go. I wouldn’t be seeking out his company, but I was determined not to change my habits to avoid him either.
For a while it worked. The queen was having problems with her eyes by then, and asked me to draft her letters as well as putting them into code. The war at home was going badly, and with very little territory left to defend, the king was trying to be clever. By then, his opponents had split into factions – Cromwell and the army wanted things to go one way, and the Members of Parliament another, and on top of that there were the Scots, dangling the idea that they might help him out if he saw fit to come over to their way in the matter of religion, and get rid of bishops. So he’d started negotiating with all three, boasting in his letters to the queen that he could play one against the other to get what he wanted. Well, as I’ve mentioned before, the king’s high opinion of his own negotiating skills was not shared by me, and by then, it wasn’t shared by her either. She was sure he’d end up giving way to one or other of them, and sent increasingly furious messages telling him to stand firm. So between them, their letters kept me busy and that meant I rarely saw anything of Crofts. If our paths did happen to cross, he invariably made some comment about pies – there’d never been much variety to his wit – but I shrugged that off well enough.
Over the following months though, more exiles arrived, mostly of the same stamp: young men who’d treated the war as a game, and then made themselves scarce when they realised it wasn’t. At home, the king’s influence had imposed a certain seriousness on court life. But in France, with the queen distracted by her efforts to secure support for the war and stop the king doing anything stupid, her new court became a place where too many people had nothing better to do than drink, play cards, set each other dares and make sport of those who weren’t in their company. The queen’s priest, Father Philip, was mimicked for his stooped posture and the tremor that had come with age; Lord Drage, who’d been injured in battle, was the subject of a crude little poem comparing him to a donkey with three legs. And of course, I didn’t escape.
They took care never to do it in front of the queen, and at first they left me alone when I was with Henry and Arabella too. I didn’t mention it to her or to them. Not just because I didn’t want anyone else to fight my battles for me, though I didn’t. It was more that I didn’t want them to see me through Crofts’ eyes, even for a second. But keeping it a secret made me feel so alone, the way only people who are different feel alone. There’s an invisible wall between us and the rest of the world, which even the people who love us are on the other side of. Sometimes, you can forget it’s there, but every time I saw Crofts’ mocking face, it reminded me what people – even people who were my friends – must see when they looked at me.
I hoped in time they’d get bored, but of course they didn’t; there was so little else to do. They invented a game where they’d take turns to suggest how a wife might be found for me: recruiting a magician to bring a doll to life, carving a face onto a turnip, dressing Susan’s poodle up as a woman. It caused so much hilarity that before long they were playing it at the dinner table every evening. I could tell just by the smirks directed at me but, because they usually sat some distance away, it was a while before Henry happened to overhear. His face darkened and he turned towards Crofts.
‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘He’s just an idiot. It doesn’t bother me.’
‘Well, it bothers me and—’
‘What’s going on?’ said Arabella, who’d been talking to someone else. She hadn’t heard what Crofts said, and I didn’t want her to.
‘Nothing. Henry was just saying he thought the meat was tough tonight.’
When she’d gone to bed, I asked Henry not to tell her what we’d been talking about.
‘I don’t want a big fuss made about it. It’s better to ignore him.’
‘I’d happily thump him for you, but I know you don’t want that,’ he said. ‘But I don’t understand why you’re letting him get away with it. You’re never short of a smart remark, you could show him up for the clod he is with half a dozen words. Get people laughing at him and he’ll soon leave you alone.’
How could I explain to Henry – tall, strong, normal Henry – it wasn’t as easy as that? It was true, I could have made Crofts look stupid with a few words – but he’d only have to mention ‘Mrs Turnipina Davy’, or whistle over the damned poodle and ask if it would have me as its wedded husband, and the company would dissolve into laughter. And when that happens, when they’re all looking down at you, picturing you marrying a turnip on a stick and laughing till their sides ache, you can make all the smart remarks you like, but you’re just pissing in the wind.
Would things have been different if Crofts hadn’t seen me at the window that day? I don’t know. But that was when it all changed. The window was at the turn of a staircase and as I glanced out, Arabella was walking Bonbon in the garden. The dog was in her last months then and very smelly, with rheumy eyes and patchy fur. She could barely shuffle along on her bandy little legs, but she still liked to take a turn round the garden, nosing at bushes and lifting her face to smell the air.
I leaned against the window. Arabella – who normally walked as though there wasn’t a second to be lost – matched the dog’s painfully slow pace, looking down and speaking encouragingly to her. Now and then she’d stop to let Bonbon sniff something interesting, then lean down to give her a little pat before they moved on.
I didn’t hear him come up the stairs behind me. Normally, Crofts’ confident steps were hard to miss, but I suspect he’d seen me and crept up to find out what I was looking at.
‘So that’s how it is, pie boy,’ he said. ‘Well, well.’
I turned, startled. He grinned and wagged a finger at me.
‘All our efforts to find you a wife, and you had one in mind already. She’s a bit tall for you though. Oh, and promised to someone else.’
There was no point in denying it; anything I said would only give him more sport. My face burned and, not wanting him to see, I turned to walk on up the stairs.
‘I wonder if she knows?’ he called after me. ‘Or have I found out your little secret?’
I pictured him walking up to Arabella at the dinner table and telling her, in front of everyone. How they’d all laugh: there I was, the court freak, thinking to throw my heart at the most beautiful girl in the place. It was as comical as anything they’d have seen at the theatre, back in the Whitehall days. He wouldn’t even care that Henry was sitting there. If I’d been an ordinary man, it would have been something to whisper in corners. Did she love me back, people would ask; was Henry being cuckolded even before he was married? With me, it was a safe joke; Henry could laugh along with everyone else, though I knew he wouldn’t.
But the worst was that Arabella would know. Once, I’d worried that if she realised I loved her, she’d laugh at me. But I knew her better now. She wouldn’t laugh; she’d look at me with pity in her eyes, and that I could not bear.
That evening I sat, as usual, with Henry and Arabella. Crofts and his friends were sniggering, now and then looking over at us. The room was full. Were there more faces round the table than usual, or had I just not noticed before how big the company had grown? I listened to Arabella and Henry talk without hearing a word they said, swallowed food I didn’t taste, and waited.
The food came and went, and still Crofts hadn’t moved. I looked down the table and he happened to glance up at the same moment. He looked across to Arabella, then pushed back his chair and sauntered over.
I stared at my plate, not wanting to see their faces when he spoke.
‘Henry,’ he said. ‘Just wanted to let you know about something.’
‘Yes?’
‘It’s quite important.’
Laughter bubbled behind his words.
‘Well, tell me then,’ said Henry.
Crofts bent down.
‘Hello, Nat,’ he said. ‘Didn’t see you there. Then again, you’re easy to miss.’
He sniggered, and glanced back towards his friends.
‘What did you want to say?’ said Henry.
‘Oh, yes. Message from the stables. That grey you wanted to take out hunting tomorrow, she’s lame. You’ll need to choose another mount.’ He murmured into my ear. ‘What did you think I was going to say, pie boy?’
When he got back to his seat, he said something to his friends and they all fell about laughing.
‘What did he say to you?’ asked Arabella.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Just one of his stupid remarks. He’s an idiot.’
I should have known Crofts wouldn’t have his fun all at once, not when he’d found such an entertaining game to play. At dinner, he’d sometimes stroll up to our end of the table, seem to hesitate, then walk on to speak to someone else. Once he came up to Arabella and pretended he had something important to tell her, then apologised and said no, he had the wrong person. And if he passed us on the stairs or in the gardens – which he did very often now – he’d be humming this or that song about a disappointed suitor, or a secret love, and smiling to himself.
Every day, I woke up thinking, ‘Will it be today?’ But he would choose the time and place, and all I could do was wait.