A Court Affair (43 page)

In no time at all, Tommy and I were fast friends; it was as if we had known each other our whole lives, though we had scarcely met before. I had caught an occasional glimpse of him and even nodded politely or bid him good day once or twice as he was coming or going on some business for my husband, but my mind had always been preoccupied and distracted by other things.

Now I discovered to my immense delight that he was a collector of tales who had carried over into his manhood, like a peddler’s pack full of wonderful things, a child’s love of stories. At every tavern, alehouse, or cottage he stopped at, he added to his collection, stashing them away in the storehouse of his memory and writing them down in a battered old copybook he carried for this purpose. He blushed a little when he told me this and was glad, and surprised, I think, that I did not laugh at him or mock but implored him to tell me a story instead. And as we rode along, he regaled us all with wondrous, captivating tales of giants, mermaids, witches and wizards, talking beasts and vicious plants, sinister serpents of both the land and sea, unicorns, elves, fairies, and goblins, evil gnomes guarding treasures, valiant knights upon daring quests, fair princesses disguised in peasants’ rags, and paupers who were really princes, bold outlaws with hearts of gold, Love’s triumph over all adversities, fire-breathing dragons, perilous voyages, enchanted realms, and travellers’ tales of exotic, faraway lands across the great blue sea.

I enjoyed myself so much that I was sorry to reach our journey’s end, and not just because I had to bid farewell to Master Blount and all his wonderful stories …

Compton Verney, Sir Richard Verney’s manor house in
Warwickshire
June–September 1559

T
he moment I caught sight of Compton Verney, the blood froze within my veins. My skin crawled, and I felt as if my hair were standing on end. There was such a sinister feel about that place! It made me want to turn my horse around and gallop away, I didn’t care where, just as fast and far as I could. I knew it in my bones; this was an accursed place. It was a bleak and ominous, frightening, dark, medieval manor, with a moat and turreted towers and narrow, arrow-slit windows that kept more light out than they let in. Even the garden seemed desolate and forbidding; nothing seemed to grow there except thorns.

“How could Robert send me here?” I wondered aloud. “Has he ever been here before? Does he
know
what it is like?”

Master Blount gazed at me with such sadness in his eyes, but he had no answer to give me and was good enough not to try to fool me with false cheer. He could see just as well as I could what a dark and miserable place Compton Verney was and that happiness could never flourish there.

As for the master of it all, Sir Richard Verney, never were a man and his house more perfectly matched. Sir Richard Verney and Compton Verney were two of a kind. Had he been a character in one of Tommy’s tales, he might have been a man who, either by his own evil will or a witch’s curse, could transfigure himself into a raven. When I saw him in profile, his nose was like a beak, as long and sharp as a knife. He dressed entirely in black except for his white shirts—I never saw even a spot of colour enliven his attire the whole time I knew him—and his hair curved back across his scalp like a gleaming blue black raven’s wing. His eyes were small, dark, and beady, and he
never
smiled, at least not that I ever saw. His face was like a mask carved from marble, very hard, cold, and still, and it showed no emotion at all. He was tall and sallow and slim, but he had big hands—
a murderer’s hands,
a little frightened voice in my mind said. And he had a voice that matched his appearance perfectly; very condescending and patrician, it dripped superiority and scorn like poison. And I
knew
instinctively that this was a man who would not hesitate to do me harm if it were to his own advantage.

When he came to help me dismount, I shied away from him—I didn’t want him to touch me! I would have fallen over backward, tumbling right off my horse, if Tommy hadn’t reached out and caught me. With gentle but strong hands, he eased me back up straight into the saddle. I had no choice then—I could not be rude and insist he step away and that Tommy or one of the other men come to assist me instead, nor could I give way to hysteria and cry and scream at him to keep away and slash at him with my riding crop—so I, most reluctantly and shivering with fear and skin-crawling revulsion, suffered Sir Richard Verney to put his hands on my waist and lift me down from the saddle and take me inside his gloomy abode.

I did not sup with the others in the Great Hall that night. I made my excuses, that I was too weary from my journey, that I had a headache, and wished only to rest.

The housekeeper brought me a tray with a tankard of ale, a loaf of bread, and a big bowl of savoury stew generously laden with chunks of beef and vegetables, and, for dessert, a beautiful cherry tart shaped like a heart with a great dollop of rich cream on top, which, she told me, had been “baked special” for my arrival, as “a lady likes such things”.

In spite of the fear that I could not shake from me, I enjoyed this hearty repast, and, when she came to take the tray away, I thanked the housekeeper and asked her to convey my thanks and compliments to the cook. The words were sincerely meant, and I hoped they might be the first step towards a new friendship. I was lonely and felt the need for kindness and companionship if I must live within these stark, dark walls that already felt as if they were closing in on me. Had I actually glimpsed them moving and seen them sprout iron spikes, I would not have been at all surprised. And when I lay down upon my bed, I half expected to see a sword dangling above me, swaying from a fraying rope.

And later, whenever I passed the suits of silver armour that stood like sentries all along the Long Gallery, where the rushlights cast only little spurts of radiance that made me feel as though I were walking alone inside a long, dark tunnel, and the walls were hung with all manner of ominously glinting weaponry—swords, daggers, pikes, axes, maces, and shields—I quickened my steps and moved as far away from them as I could, even though it made me feel silly and scold myself, but a part of me feared that they might come magically to life and reach out to harm me. I would utter a little shriek and feel my heart leap if my skirts even brushed against one of them. Despite my best efforts, more than once I became careless as I hurried anxiously along, and my skirt actually caught upon one. The suit rattled and lurched towards me as I tried to free myself. I screamed in terror and leapt away—the way the arms were posed made me think it was reaching out to grab me—causing the whole thing to fall with a
tremendous
crash onto the stone floor, tearing my skirt as it fell, and I was sorely embarrassed when the servants came running and had to pick it up and put the whole thing back together again, all because of my carelessness and nerves.

The whole time I was at Compton Verney, my ears always expected to hear the moans and groans of tortured souls in rattling chains and agony, like denizens of a dungeon, though the servants repeatedly assured me that there was no dungeon and that which had been in bygone days was now a harmless root cellar, which I might at any time see for myself if it would put my mind at ease.

I was
amazed
there was not a ghost story attached to the house, for if ever a house deserved a ghost, it was this one. But there was only a bloodstained white damsel who was said to run across the park on moonlit nights, her mouth open wide, screaming silent screams that no one could hear, and always running in a direction
away
from the house, where, the servants assured me, she never ventured. I wondered if the poor, damned soul were instead fleeing from it. And there was also a tale of a woodcutter who had sold his soul to the Devil for a sack of gold, but when he opened it, he found it to contain only chestnuts.

Though I was bone weary and did indeed have an aching head, I did not sleep at all my first night at Compton Verney. I spent the whole of it either bent over a basin or squatting over a chamber pot or lying back against the pillows gasping, clutching my aching stomach and chest, as beads of fever sweat sparkled upon my brow. I slept a little after the sun came up, but, after I sat up and accepted a small bowl of porridge at Pirto’s urging, I was plunged right back into the agonies of the night.

Robert arrived three days later, riding like a prince on a white horse, accompanied by a bevy of blue-velvet-liveried retainers and a party of elegantly apparelled gentlemen, apparently friends to both himself and Richard Verney, and a cook who had once served a French prince. There was also a cart filled with food and costly spices. But he did not stay long or spend much time with me or even come to my bed. I doubt the time I spent with him that week tallied up to even one hour. He amused himself drinking and gambling downstairs, behind closed doors, with Richard Verney and the other men. And there were women there as well, the unsavoury sort, the kind who sell their favours cheaply in dark alleys and low taverns. I caught a glimpse of them, giggling and whispering with their unwashed heads together, as Richard Verney’s steward, grimacing with distaste and keeping his distance as if he feared fleas would leap off their shabby, tattered finery onto him, discreetly herded them into the room where his master was entertaining his guests. Robert must have encountered a rare run of bad luck, for three times he had to send Tommy Blount galloping back to London for more money, and when I saw him, he was unshaven and dishevelled, wearing the same clothes each time, though more stained and malodorous and in a thunderous black mood so that I hardly dared speak to him. I had had Mr Edney sew the gold Spanish buttons Robert had given me onto a russet velvet gown with a gold-fringed collar, but Robert didn’t even notice them. He had not a word of praise to bestow upon me, nor kisses or embraces to give me either. I daresay the tavern trollops lifted their dingy petticoats and attended to his manly needs while I, his wife, slept alone, twisting restlessly beneath the sheets, reaching out for the husband who should have been but was not there beside me. Then he was gone again, back to London, back to the Queen.

The whole time I stayed at Compton Verney, nothing that passed my lips seemed to stay put inside me; it wanted out just as much as I did. Thank God and all His angels for sending me Tommy Blount; without him I would have surely wasted away and died. He always found some excuse to stop and pass some time with me on his ceaseless rides for Robert, whether he had a message, money, or some token from my husband or not. He would take me out into the fresh air and feed me apples and other treats, like a gingerbread baby or a mincemeat pie he had bought at a fair, which we would break in half and share, while he regaled me with tales a Gypsy woman had told him, or a more humble repast like fresh baked bread and a yellow round of cheese he had bought from a cottager’s wife he passed along the way. These foods filled me; they stayed put and did me good. Tommy also helped me to make friends with the people who lived near-abouts, and often I received invitations to visit and sup with them, and
not once
did I
ever
suffer a single bout of sickness, not even a twinge of bellyache, after sitting down at table with any of them.

When I realised this, I became even more certain that something was
very
wrong indeed at Compton Verney. I wrote to Robert, but he didn’t believe me. He just scoffed at me and my “foolish notions” and said it was just my imagination “running wild and too fast” and I should “put it on a leash and bring it to heel”, or “bridle it and break it as though it were a horse”.

He sent me spices to sprinkle on my food, to make it more palatable and calm my stomach, but they only made me sicker, and when he sent me more, I threw them into the moat. As further proof that it was all in my mind, he pointed out that Pirto, who shared my food, even eating from the same bowl as I, or even switching plates to try to allay my fears, never sickened, nor did anyone else when I deigned to descend from my room and eat in the Great Hall with the rest of the household. I was the only one who was ill, and I was making myself so by letting my imagination “cast a sinister spell” over my mind and cause me to see “malice and mischief everywhere and accuse innocent people of the worst evils”.

Sir Richard Verney, my husband insisted, was one of the kindest, most tenderhearted men he had ever known, “one who would weep like a woman if he saw a stray dog run down by a coach,” “one who feels far too much rather than nothing at all.” But I didn’t believe him; seeing Richard Verney, I just couldn’t. I could not even begin to imagine this man crying over a dead dog, or shedding a tear over anything at all, not even if his wife or child died. And I
knew
I was being poisoned; I was
sure
of it! Yet everyone treated me like a child or a madwoman and refused to believe me; they only listened with half an ear, never taking me seriously, and dismissed all I said as foolish or brainsick fancy. But I
knew
the truth; I
was
being poisoned,
I was
! Why else did every bite I took at Compton Verney disagree with me and provoke an agony of the bowels and vomiting and pains in my chest, whilst all that I ate elsewhere pleased me and filled my stomach, lying peaceably within it like a cat curling up on a fireside settle, and did me nothing but good? But no one would believe me; they thought it was all in my mind, or something wrong with my insides, suggesting perhaps “they were all knotted up” by the “surfeit of melancholy” that afflicted me. Some days I was so upset, frightened, and frustrated by it all that I lay abed all day crying with Custard and Onyx snuggled up beside me, my tears soaking into their soft fur.

I was no fool. I
knew
my death would serve a purpose, and, to certain folk, it would be deemed most advantageous, as if Death’s scythe had, in striking me down, cut a bountiful golden harvest for Robert to reap. It would free him just as surely as the divorce I refused to give him would. And without the taint of scandal sticking like shit to his shoes, it would allow him to play the grieving widower, then throw off his sombre mourning black after a year, don his purple and gold finery and peacock feathers, and strut like a vain and preening cockerel up the aisle to claim his royal bride, and the crown he would gain by her, while I slept eternally, my mouldering bones boxed inside a marble tomb.