A Court Affair (15 page)

The day before Robert rode away to London, I put on my wedding gown to begin posing for the full-length portrait. I had just finished dressing when Robert walked unexpectedly into the room. I had thought him gone for the day, but he had come back to retrieve a letter he had forgotten, and my face lit up at the sight of him. Lavinia snatched up a stick of charcoal and began to sketch wildly, feverishly trying to capture the true and naked love she saw upon my face.

“This,” she would later say when she showed the rough and hasty sketch to me, “is the
real
Amy. This is what a bride
should
look like if we were not such mercenary people who make marriage a business like wool or any other trade all about goods and profits.”

The finished painting would be as different from the usual staid and formal wedding portraits as night from day—“a woman in love, not just a lady showing off her wedding gown,” Lavinia would proudly say.

I described the meadow at Syderstone, and she painted me there, walking barefoot in love and sunshine, with a big bouquet of buttercups in my hand and wreathing my wild, tumbled-down hair. And, at Robert’s request, made the night before he left, as we sat beside the fire after supper and he regaled her with the tale of how I had saved the goose’s life, she painted the goose in beside me, with a golden bow about her neck, eating from my hand.

“This is my masterpiece,” Lavinia declared when we at last stood before the finished portrait.

Robert had already been weeks away by then, and I wished fervently that he could see that happy painted girl who seemed poised to step out of the golden frame as if she were about to walk right into the arms of the man she loved. That love, that longing, showed clearly upon her face.

“That’s me,” I marvelled as I stood before it, my hand rising up tentatively, then falling back down, not quite daring to reach out and touch it lest I smear the paint. “That’s how I feel inside! Oh,
thank you,
Lavinia,
thank you
! Now the feeling will live forever. Should it ever start to fade, all I will need to do is look at this portrait, and it will all come rushing back again.
Thank you!
”

I liked it far better than the miniature Robert had taken with him, galloping off wearing it over his heart under his riding leathers upon the braided satin chain I had made for him from my hair ribbons. I thought the young woman captured against the azure ground looked far too solemn and grave, as though she were inclined to melancholy, as if her eyes and lips were a stranger to smiles and laughter. “Is that
really
me?” I bit my tongue lest I say it aloud and Lavinia see how disappointed I was and think the failure was hers, when it was in truth all mine. Without my habitual smile, I thought my nose appeared a trifle too large and my mouth too small, almost as if it were pursed in disapproval. And my eyes looked oddly vacant, flat, more blue grey than blue green, and entirely lacking their accustomed vivacity and sparkle. I looked so cold, so aloof and chilly, and that was a
great
shame, when I was in truth so warm and friendly; I was a little shy, that’s true, but I was not unapproachable; I wanted everyone to like me. I feared that anyone Robert might show it to would come away thinking him encumbered by a dull and grim wife whose bed was as cold as the grave.

Now, when it was too late to change it, the elegant dark gown seemed a poor choice, far too funereal, and I wished I had worn the maiden’s blush pink or the sky blue or apple green, or even one of several gowns I owned in my favourite buttercup yellow. I was a sentimental young bride, and my trousseau brimmed over with exquisite gowns embroidered, woven, and figured with hearts, flowers, and lovers’ knots. I even had a white gown sumptuously embroidered in red and pink silks with cupids and hearts and flying arrows. I should have worn something like that, something that showed who I
really
was, that was true to the giddy young girl who walked on pink perfumed clouds of love, not the staid and elegant lady I was trying to be. I should not have tried to impress, for in doing so I had made my face a stranger even to myself, who was accustomed to seeing it every day in the looking glass. Even Pirto, when she saw it, furrowed her brow and asked, “But where’s your smile, pet? You don’t look half like yourself without it!”

If I were superstitious, I would think the face in the portrait was a portent of the sad and sombre woman I would become.

When the larger portrait was finished, Lavinia had to pack up her paints and return to court; she had many commissions awaiting her and could not tarry, and I was left alone again, with only the servants to bear me company. Robert, though I wrote him many anxious and yearning letters, was vague and evasive about when he would return, and when he would send for me to visit him he simply could not—or would not—say. I spent my days walking listlessly upon the sandy beach, alone, with the grey waves crashing and the gulls circling overhead, sometimes pausing to pick up a shell, remembering all the joyous hours we had spent there, frolicking and loving. It made my loneliness even harder to bear.

A fortnight later, unable to bear it a moment longer, I leapt from my lonely bed in the middle of the night and shook Pirto awake and bade her, “Pack my things at once; we’re going home to Stanfield Hall!”

At my parents’ home I would at least be among familiar faces, and there was work I could be doing. I would no longer be the idle, pitiful bride the servants and common folk at Hemsby whispered about walking the beach alone with her hair billowing in the wind, pining for her husband in a windblown white gown embroidered with gold lovers’ knots. They said the sight of me reminded them of a ghost, and I wondered if such would someday be my fate, that my lonely shade would return one day to walk the beach for all eternity, waiting for Robert to come back to me. I shuddered at the thought and even had nightmares about it and prayed it was not an omen; I wanted to rest in peace when I died, not continue to exist as an anguished spirit doomed to walk the earth forevermore without peace or rest; to me that was like being damned, another version of Hell, only without the flames and demons. And resuming my old duties as chatelaine was a far better way to occupy my time than weeping and yearning and letting fearful fancies about the beautiful ladies at court, who would not scruple to flash their most beguiling smiles and gaze at Robert with invitations in their eyes, rob me of my sleep and peace of mind. So I packed up my things and went home to my parents.

Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham, in Norfolk
and
Syderstone Manor in Norfolk
September 1550–May 1553

N
early three years crept slowly past, like a snail on a pane of glass, with the tense and tedious waiting relieved by only brief and hurried visits from Robert. He always came bearing gifts, as though he thought worldly goods could atone for his absence. But his preoccupied smile and distracted eyes told me that even though his body was, his mind wasn’t
truly
there with me. He was there like a whirlwind and then gone again, and I was left dizzy and reeling in his wake.

He was
never
there for holidays. They always had such great need of him at court, he said, but he always sent gifts—lavish, costly gifts for everyone, even the servants—but he never came himself; the King, and his father, were counting on him to help organise the Yuletide revels. So in muted sorrow, trying to smile and not let my tears rain on everyone else’s pleasure, each year I celebrated the Twelve Days of Christmas and toasted in the New Year without my husband beside me.

Father and I went back to Syderstone—a draughty ruin though it was, and becoming less habitable every year—for our traditional New Year’s ritual. Muffled in our furs and warmest woollens, and with all our servants and workers and their families gathered around us in the snow-blanketed orchard, we set a great fire blazing, and Cook brewed up a bubbling cauldron of Lambswool—a special blend of beer flavoured with roasted apples, ginger, nutmeg, and sugar, so named for the white froth that floated on top—and ladled out cups of the steaming brew to us all. And as the church bell tolled the midnight hour, we toasted the apple trees and sang carols to them, thanking them for the fruit they had given us and hoping that their winter nakedness would soon be clothed with fine green leaves and, later, beautiful, fragrant pink and white blossoms, then fat, ripe, rosy fruit. Then the musicians played, and we danced and drank Lambswool and ate gingerbread until the sun came up, and we all staggered home and fell into our beds to sleep half the day away.

And in June, after the shearing was finished, we held a celebration with music and dancing and served our people apple cider and sweet wafers baked to a golden crisp inside special irons that imprinted upon each side a design of a sheep in full woolly coat ringed by a border of Syderstone’s famous apples. We always let them have cream, as much as they pleased, to dip the wafers in. That was a
real
treat for them, as most had to use the cream from their own cow for making butter and cheese, so this was a sweet luxury indeed, and it made my heart glad to see the happy smiles it brought to their faces. But in my heart I ached because Robert was never there to share the fun and joy with me. Even as I smiled and clapped my hands as we watched the morris dancers, fire-eaters, acrobats, and jugglers, I could not help feeling his absence and longing to have him there with me. And when we went out at midnight, singing and skipping and still sipping cider as we made our way to the top of the hill and there packed a cartwheel all around with straw and set it alight and rolled it down, hoping it would reach the bottom before it went out, for that foretold a bountiful harvest, I wished with all my heart that he were there and that the revelry would end in love, with me in my husband’s arms, and not with me alone, restless and yearning, in my lonely bed.

And he was never there to take part in the Candlestick Branle we danced every year in the Great Hall on All Hallows’ Eve, sometimes slow, solemn, and stately, other times rollicking, fast-paced, and lively, passing lighted candlesticks from hand to hand as we danced in a line and, like a lady’s intricately braided coiffure, wove complicated formations, while my father, and the others who were not taking part in the dance, watched from the gallery above or standing high upon the stairs.

But there were good times too, even though they were few and far between and grew more so with each year that passed as Robert’s absences grew more prolonged and his visits ever briefer. Eventually they dwindled to a hasty handful strewn throughout the year that seemed to be hello and goodbye all in the blink of an eye.

Once he sent me some jewelled grapes to wear in my hair, beautiful clusters of smooth, round amethyst and emerald grapes with silver leaves set with sparkling diamond dewdrops. They were so pretty, so special, and unique! And when he sent me word that he was coming, I was ready. When he started to bound up the stairs, sweaty and smelling of horses, sweat, leather, and spice, I was there at the top waiting for him with the jewelled grapes in my hair, wearing a new gown of gooseberry green silk with a kirtle and under-sleeves of wine-coloured silk embroidered with silver vines hung with green and gold grapes. Without a word—there was no need for any—Robert swept me up in his arms and carried me to our chamber and straight to our bed. We didn’t leave it until long after the sun came up the next day.

But the next evening, when he sat late by the fire, and I came in my shift, sheer like a clinging cobweb covering my body, with my hair unbound, to lay my head upon his knee, he just sat there, staring broodingly into the flames, as if his mind were miles and miles away. I could not help but wonder who it was he saw dancing in those entrancing flames. Was it the flame-haired Elizabeth? Did the crackling, rippling, swaying, leaping, grasping flames remind him of her, shining like the brightest bonfire, dancing in an orange and yellow gown with her hair a flaming mass about her shoulders, flying out as she leapt and spun round and round? I was
certain
of it, but I bit my tongue and said nothing. I didn’t want to ruin the rare and peaceful bliss and shatter it with an argument. I wanted kisses and caresses, not raised voices and quarrelsome words. So I knelt down and laid my head in his lap, but when his hand moved to absently stroke my hair, I wondered if in his mind it was red instead of golden. Does she do this with him? I wondered. And the pleasures we shared together in bed, did he give and take the same with her? Was I special in
any
way, was there anything he did with me that was ours alone, or did I share all with Elizabeth, or, even worse, did I only get the crumbs from her plate? I didn’t know, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. I wasn’t sure which would hurt more—knowing for certain or the questions that clawed at my mind, like raging, hungry lions that I tried, sometimes successfully, other times not, to quiet and subdue and send retreating with a crack of my whip, but they were
always
there, sometimes growling low, other times roaring deafeningly,
demanding
to be heard, to have their curiosity fed and sated.

When Custard had her yearly litter of kittens, even though I marvelled and caught my breath at each tiny mewling, squirming body, so small I could hold it in the palm of my hand, I felt the shadow of sorrow hanging over me. I
yearned
to be a mother. But how could I conceive when my husband was away and had so little time for me? There was always one excuse or another to keep him away or prevent him from sending for me. Even as the proud mother brought each kitten to me and laid it in my lap, and I petted and praised her and profusely admired her babies, I envied her, even though she was a cat. And while Custard lay in her basket by the fire and nursed her little brood, I would take Onyx, who had, like me, never conceived, onto my lap and stroke her sleek black fur and listen to her purr, and smile through my tears; the kittens were such a bittersweet sight, they did my heart good and hurt it all at the same time.