A Court Affair (53 page)

I crushed the letter in my hand and let the river take it.

He could have felt them every day, if only he had chosen to make a home and a life with me as he promised! Damn him and his lies—let the river take them and drown the lying words as sorrow had my loving heart!

But never bright enough to compare to Elizabeth; I never shone as brightly as her crown.
Crumple!
Into the river. Reading these words hurt too much to keep them any longer. Words I once believed, that made me feel so warm and wanted, so important and adored—they were empty, but their hollowness filled me with pain.

Lies, lies! Lies! Lies! Lies!
Crumple! Crumple! Crumple! Crumple! Crumple!
Into the river to drown them all the way my heart drowns in sorrow!
I hate you, Robert, I hate you!

Crumple! Crumple! Crumple!
Sometimes words hurt worse than broken bones; bones heal, but sometimes hearts don’t, and words
always
have the power to come back to haunt and hurt all over again!

I knelt there in the bed of buttercups by the river and watched the wadded and crumpled letters bob and float upon its surface, forming a little flotilla of falsehoods sailing away from me. And I left the yellow silk ribbons lying in the grass like yellow worms for the birds to find, to weave their nests with. Everything he had ever said that made me feel good was all a lie. I had never been special at all. I never
really
mattered; even though he married me, I was just a dalliance he could easily walk away from, crushing and breaking my heart underfoot, never caring how much it hurt and bled.

A loving heart is the most beautiful and precious gift one person can give to another, and I gave him mine. How could he break it? How could he say all those things—those wonderful, heartwarming, and stirring things—and not mean them? I used to think that I was special, I thought I mattered, I believed I was loved, and that I was important to the man I gave my heart to. Now I knew that I was nothing.

Words are worthless when actions contradict and reveal the lies hidden within. When Robert started breaking promises, that was when the truth first started peeping through the cracks, even though I turned my face away and tried to pretend, to make excuses, because I didn’t want to see its harsh and ugly goblin face. I didn’t want to face the fact that everything I believed was false. How cruel of him to pretend, to make me believe!

And how
foolish
of me to waste my life away, loving and wanting such a one as he; he didn’t deserve my heart, and I deserved better, a love that was true, not a wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing, a human chameleon, a charlatan selling lies and contradictions like the potions the nostrum peddlers sold, touting miracles and wonders inside a glass bottle.

I had been blind for so long, but now I had regained my sight, and I saw Robert fully clear, and yet … God, help me!
I still love him!
I don’t know why, and I know I shouldn’t, but I do, I do, I do! I want him back—but it doesn’t make sense! I know it can never be as it was; the hurt goes too deep, perhaps even deeper than did the love, the dream of which I cannot let go. I know I can never trust him again; the fragments, slivers, and shards of too many dashed hopes, shattered dreams, and broken promises lie scattered in the ever-widening gulf that has over the years grown between us. But I
cannot
break the spell of the illusion he sold that girl of seventeen in a bed of buttercups nigh on ten years ago!

All I want is to wake up from the nightmare my life has become and find Robert in bed beside me, smiling into my eyes, calling me his Buttercup, as he takes me into his arms and loves me with all the passion and tenderness he used to.

Let go! Let go!
I tell myself. Let go of the dream—it isn’t real, and it never
really
was! But if I let go, what is left for me to hold on to? Air as empty as Robert’s words of tenderness and love. I’m afraid of falling, but the truth is, I’ve already fallen. I’m still alive, and yet I’m already dead. He killed me. For what is life without hopes and dreams, something to look forward to, like a welcoming candle in the window on a dark, tar black night? I know all too well the answer to that question. It is a meaningless failure, pain, and nothing; it is waking up every day knowing that you have failed at the only thing in life that matters. Sometimes I laugh—even though it hurts me, and any who saw might think me mad—I laugh until I cry, when I hear the talk that Robert means to murder me, because he already has. I live and breathe, I walk and speak, but I am already dead.

I flung myself facedown in the buttercups where we used to make love and wept, angry with Robert and even angrier at myself, watering their roots with my tears. I cried until I had no tears left and the stars had come out; then I walked slowly back to the house, to make ready to depart at dawn, to return to Compton Verney, to be there, waiting for Robert, when he came to escort me to Cumnor Place, another house that was not my home.

Cumnor Place, Berkshire, near Oxford
November 1559–February 1560

C
old, grey, bleak,
and
dreary
were the first words that sprang to mind when I first beheld Cumnor Place. It was like a large grey stone rectangle with the centre hollowed out to create a grey flagstone courtyard. Everything was so …
grey
! I dearly hoped the inside was enlivened by some colour and that the Forsters and the others who lodged within wore cheery clothes. The roof was peaked with several sharp gables, like arrows pointing adamantly up to Heaven, and the windows were arched too. The whole place still retained the look of the monastery it had been for over two hundred years until King Henry dissolved the monasteries. Though a few refinements had since been made by the owner, Dr Owen, Cumnor had never become a
true
home and was instead like several separate households existing side by side beneath the same roof, linked only by the Great Hall and the kitchen, buttery, and chapel they all shared. Though it was not a sinister place like Compton Verney, coming to Cumnor felt like arriving at the end of the world to me—desolate, with nowhere else to go, I knew I had reached my journey’s end. It did not help that it was a grey November day, drizzling rain, and so cold that it felt as if an invisible torturer were there beside me, sticking needles of ice into me that pierced right through my flesh and drilled holes into my bones that instantly filled with ice water.

I shuddered as we rode through the arched gatehouse into the courtyard, gazing up at the high, vaulted ceiling upon which avenging angels, with shields and swords of fire, did battle against a legion of demons.

There was that shivery, skin-crawling sensation again, up and down my spine and neck, making my hair stand on end. “A goose just walked over my grave,” I whispered, but if Robert, riding beside me, heard, he decided to ignore it.

Instinctively, I reached out to touch his arm, forgetting for the moment that I no longer trusted him; I just wanted a little of the comfort and warmth a wife should have from her husband.

“This place frightens me,” I confided in a quiet, tremulous whisper. “It’s like a tomb, a grey stone tomb; I think you mean to entomb me here, Robert!”

“Oh, for the love of Christ!”
Robert exclaimed, smacking his brow with his leather-gloved palm. “You’re
never
satisfied, Amy! You didn’t like it at the Hydes’ and, by behaving like a madwoman, saw to it that you had to leave; you thought Richard Verney was trying to poison you and, when that failed, hired a highwayman to kill you on your spur-of-the-moment trip to London, which he knew
nothing
about beforehand—a neat trick that, I must say!—and
now
”—he sighed and waved a hand to take in Cumnor—“this place frightens you! It conjures up macabre fantasies of a tomb, and you think that I, your loving husband, intend to bury you alive here! What will it be next, I wonder. A ghost, an incubus to molest you as you sleep, a blood-sucking demon, or a whole coven of witches? God’s teeth, if you weren’t a woman, I would tell you to try your hand at writing plays; you’ve certainly the imagination for it!”

“I’m sorry, Robert …” I started to say.

“Yes, you are, Amy,” he adamantly agreed with a vigorous nod of his head. “You are a
sorry
woman who is
always
sorry about something!”

Without giving me a chance to answer, he spurred his horse onward and raised his hand to wave as he called out a greeting to Anthony Forster and his wife, who had just stepped out into the courtyard to welcome us.

I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Thomas Blount riding behind me, looking at me with his eyes full of pity. He looked as if he wanted to say something but didn’t know what to say, so to save us both—him from struggling to find the right though futile words, and me from having to hear them—I hastily turned away and hurried to catch up with Robert.

Robert left it to Mrs Forster to show me to my rooms, while he went off to warm his hands and sit by the massive fireplace in the Great Hall and converse with Mr Forster.

The instant I crossed the threshold, I gasped; I had never been so cold in my life! I burned and shivered and tingled and felt so tense, afraid, and wary. It was far worse than Compton Verney, which looked as though it were built to instil fear and give a body bad dreams, whereas Cumnor, though grim and grey, did not look like to harbour terrors, and the Forsters seemed right friendly.

“Come, my dear.” Mrs Forster took my arm and gave me an encouraging smile. “It’s a cold, clammy place, I know. One would think it were carved from ice instead of stone, but you’ll be glad of it come summer, you mark my word! And far too dark, I know! It’s
so
difficult to light; no matter how many candles, torches, or rushlights we use, it never seems to be enough to cast out the gloom! It’s as though the shadows think this is their home, not ours, and will not be cast out! It does take some getting used to, I know. I
hated
it when I first came here—I thought it was as cold and dark as the grave—but those feelings will soon pass. And your rooms are
lovely
. You have the best wing at Cumnor—I made sure of it myself—and your things have arrived from Compton Verney, and your
darling
cats, and there’s a warm fire all ready and waiting for you. You’ll soon be as warm as toasted bread and feel right at home with us, I promise. And, later, after you’ve rested, I’ll introduce you to the other ladies who are lodging here, and my children. I do hope you like children, Lady Dudley; mine are rather a rambunctious lot. And I hope you are not afraid of frogs; they catch them in the pond in the park and make pets of them. They’ve a great bullfrog named Christopher; he jumped on my chest the other night while I was sleeping and nearly scared me to death! I thought the fright would turn my hair stark white!” She laughed and patted her sleek nut brown hair, pinned smoothly back beneath her hood.

She led me to a steep stone staircase that spiralled round a newel post, broken by a landing like a great grey slab of a tombstone in the middle.

As Mrs Forster started up the stairs, I saw a grey-robed figure descending them at the same time. How curious! A monk! I had thought them all gone in King Henry’s time! I started to cry out, for both seemed oblivious to the other and certain to collide, but the words froze in my throat when I realised that I could see through the grey-robed friar as if he were formed of frosted glass. I was looking at a
ghost
! He walked right through Mrs Forster, and she never gave a sign of noticing, only a little shiver as she uttered another complaint about the cold and drew her shawl closer about her shoulders.

I hung back in fear, cowering against the wall, gathering my cloak close about me—I didn’t want any part of me to touch him—as he passed me by, then …
vanished
! He just … disappeared, as if he had never been there at all!

“Now, you
must
be
very
careful of these stairs, my dear,” Mrs Forster cautioned as she continued slowly up them. “Don’t rush, take your time, even after you are used to them; do not let familiarity or haste make you careless. I don’t know why Dr Owen doesn’t have them replaced. They are original to the house; it was built in 1330, I believe. The leather soles of two centuries’ worth of monks’ sandals have worn them as slick and smooth as glass. And there’s an awkward turn just here that seems to come out of nowhere …”

Mrs Forster glanced back and saw me still standing there at the bottom. I hadn’t moved a step; I was frozen with fear.

“Oh, I’ve frightened you when I meant only to caution you. Come, come, my dear, there’s no need to be afraid—just be
careful,
and you shall be just fine! I’m up and down these stairs
all
day, as they lead directly into the Long Gallery, where I like to sit by the fire and sew, and my children delight in running up and down when they cannot be outside. They climb these stairs like monkeys, and we’ve yet to break a bone!”