“Tired, my lord, and a bit sore. I shall make it, though.”
“Good lass. But since the hour is probably on three, I suggest you and Stephen ride with us to spend the night at Banstead and set out for Hever early on the morrow. Lady Carey and I will probably be there sometime in the next day, or the one after.”
Nancy’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. Had she not seen what he was implying before, the simple wench, thought Mary. Well, at least she understands his meaning now and she will be my ally when we arrive at his precious inn. And now he dared to hint that they would stay more than one day as if he thought she would run off with him when her lord husband was dead only five days!
“Yes, milord,” the girl said. Staff nodded and they turned their horses’ noses toward Banstead two miles to the west.
The village was quaint and charming; Mary had to admit that much. No horrible crosses defiled the doors and people wandered about normally at their daily tasks. A Medieval steeple dominated the view, its darkened stone and slender Gothic spires distinct in the sunlight. Across the central town green which stretched at its feet, a few cattle grazed. The village inn stood out plainly among the clusters of other whitewashed and black timbered walls. The inn curled itself in an L-shape around a garden gone to summer riot of late roses and splotches of blues and golds. “The Golden Gull” the frayed sign read with its proud painting of a wheeling sea gull upon a sky of clearest blue.
She pulled one sore leg over Eden’s lathered neck and let Staff lift her gently to the ground. Her legs nearly buckled on the cobbled courtyard, and they shook as he led her by the elbow to the inn door, which stood silently ajar. The huge common room within was dim. Its trestle table was set for supper, but no fire burned at the hearth and no one scurried to welcome them.
“Whitman!” Staff deposited her on a bench, and Nancy sank wearily beside her, after nearly tripping over her unwieldy sword. Staff went to the steep stairs which disappeared to the second floor. “Whitman, you old sea dog, come out of hiding and now! You have guests, man, paying guests!”
A door slammed in the depths of the house, and feet thudded quickly up the steps from beside the fireplace. A great red-bearded face appeared and Mary’s mouth dropped to see how much the man looked like the king—huge and red and ruddy, but much shorter.
“Stafford, damn yer eyes!” came the explosion and the man pounded Staff on the back rather than bowing as he should have, she thought. “I never thought to see you hove to in these parts. You have not forgotten the coins I owe you for dicin’ with me, is that it? Come to collect yer due?”
“I thought maybe we could settle that once and for all staying in your fine hostelry a night or two, my man. This is Lady Carey and her servants Stephen and Nancy. Can we find anyone in this deserted place to care for us and our horses?”
“A course, my lord, and proud of it.” His deep-set eyes took in the tired party and lit to see such a beauty in men’s clothes as Mary’s long locks spilled from under her linen cap.
“There be fine rooms for all of you upstairs. Will three do, one large and the other two wee ones? There be little business at Banstead, but we do right well for those that come through. A little traveling fair is in town now, but those kind a folk stay out in their own tents. Allow me to show you to yer rooms. My wife, she be back soon after she spends all my money at the fair, eh? We have two little ones, milord. Life is good here since I left the Mary Rose these six years when my sire died an’ left me the Gull.”
They trooped up the stairs, and it was only then that Mary’s eyes took in the elaborate rigged ropes and ship’s tackle along the walls of the room and stairwell. “The Mary Rose you said, Master Whitman? His Grace’s fine ship the Mary Rose? You have been a sailor in the king’s navy then?”
Staff laughed aloud at her deduction, but Whitman’s beaming face was serious. “Aye, milady. For fifteen years I be a sailor for this king and his royal father afore him. We protected the channel on the Mary Rose where I met his lordship on some a his voyages to France. And afore that I sailed on the Golden Gull where, if’n I can say it, I had a much kinder master, eh, milord?”
“We shall tell the lady the whole story after she has rested, Whit.”
“I sailed on the Mary Rose once,” Mary said to them as they paused on the tiny landing from which several crooked doors departed. “I sailed on her with Her Grace, the Princess Mary, when she went to France to wed King Louis. It was a very long time ago.”