A Court Affair (54 page)

I swallowed hard and pushed myself forward and started up after her.

On the landing, I paused, took a deep breath, and forced myself to ask, “Mrs Forster, is there … is there a ghost?”

“A ghost, my dear?” Mrs Forster turned and stared at me with a wary, concerned look in her eyes. “Why ever do you ask?”

“At Compton Verney there was a tale of a ghost the servants used to tell, and I … I was just curious if there was one at Cumnor. I … I’ve a friend who collects stories,” I rushed on, concocting a half lie to not make myself appear even more a fool, “so I always inquire at the houses I visit.”

“Oh!” Mrs Forster breathed a sigh of relief. “I see! Well, I hope your friend can be persuaded to visit and share some stories with us one cold winter’s night. It would be so cosy to cluster round the fire and listen. I know the children would enjoy it, and so would I. Yes, there is indeed a ghost said to haunt Cumnor, but it’s just a tale the servants tell, I suspect; whenever we hire a new housemaid, the others like to sneak up behind and give her a good fright. It’s said to be a grey friar with his hood drawn up, so no one can see his face; there’s only a darkness there that no human eyes or earthly light can pierce. But it’s
nothing
you need worry
your
pretty head about, my dear, for they say only the dying can actually
see
him. Fancy that! It’s not much of a ghost, if you ask me! Though I can see how it would give a fright to any who thought he was creeping up on them; no wonder the servants make such sport of it!”

I gasped, and everything seemed to waver and get even darker, and I felt my body lurch and sway forward and start to fall, but then Mrs Forster was there, her arms tight about my waist, shouting for help as I hung, limp as a child’s rag poppet, in her arms. I heard running feet, and then Tommy was there, gathering me up in his arms and carrying me the rest of the way upstairs.

“Oh, the poor thing!” I heard Mrs Forster exclaim, though her voice sounded as if it came from very far away. “Lord Robert said she’d been unwell—prone to melancholy, he said she was—and the journey must have tired her more than I realised. Come this way, Master Blount, and lay her on the bed. There, my dear.” She sat down beside me and began briskly rubbing my cold hands. “You just rest …”

When I awakened, with Custard and Onyx purring beside me, I heard galloping hoofbeats. I sprang up and rushed to the window just in time to see Robert’s black cloak billowing out behind him like the wings of Death. Once again, he hadn’t bothered to say goodbye. The vial of green hemlock pills was on the table by my bed with a note from Robert reminding me of my promise to take them. In a frenzy of anger, I snatched up the vial and flung it against the wall, shattering it, sending shards of glass and pills flying. But as Custard and Onyx stirred and padded across the bed, I ran and frantically picked it all up for fear that my pets might be harmed by them. I threw the evil little green things into the fire, then ran back to the bed, gathered both my cats in my arms, and nuzzled and kissed them, letting their soft fur soak up my tears.

I kept to my room for a week. I didn’t want to see anyone. I had no desire for company or food. Every time Pirto brought me a message from Mrs Forster or a tray, I shook my head and turned my face to the wall until she went away. I just lay there, listless against the pillows, watching the sun rise and set through the windows, sometimes sleeping for a little while and always trying to remember to sleep on my back and not roll over onto my left side and provoke an angry protest from my cancer-riddled breast. It was like the pain caused by biting into something very sugary and sweet with a rotten tooth, only
much
worse, and this pain echoed for
hours
afterwards.

But my solitude was soon to end. Mrs Forster’s rambunctious brood would not be dissuaded, and soon they were pushing past Pirto and bounding up onto my bed, to introduce themselves to me and show me their toys and frogs, including the famous Christopher, who they boasted could leap farther and croak louder than any frog God ever made, a talent he displayed by promptly belching out a deep, sonorous croak whenever his belly was tickled. They entertained me with stories, songs, dances, and riddles, and enacted little dramas for me, including their favourite game of “Old King Henry and His Wives”. The boys would each take turns portraying the mighty, murderous monarch, pointing and bellowing like thunder,
“Off with her head!”
as the girls, taking turns being either Anne Boleyn or Katherine Howard, fell to their knees, cowering before the King, hands clasped, begging for mercy, only to be dragged away bawling and screaming by another boy enacting the role of executioner to lay their head upon the block. They brought flowers to brighten my sickroom and treats like jam tarts and fresh-baked gingerbread to try to excite my appetite. The boys enacted battles around my bed mounted on their hobbyhorses and clashing wooden swords while their sisters sat round me with their dolls. And sometimes they played dress-up with my gowns and jewels. When their mother cautioned them to be careful and despaired that they would ruin my beautiful things with their jam-sticky fingers, I shrugged and said, “Let them. I have many gowns, but no children of my own.”

A few days later, Pirto bundled me into a warm, fur-lined cloak, and, with Mrs Forster fluttering about and fussing over me, and the children holding tightly to my hands and crowding close, promising, “We’ll protect you, Amy!” I carefully descended the stairs for the first time since I had arrived at Cumnor. They took me out into the park, to see the pond, though it was iced over, so there were no frogs to be seen, and settled me on a stone bench to be warmed by the frail wintry gilt of the afternoon sun. And Mrs Forster took the opportunity to introduce me to the other two ladies who lodged at Cumnor, each occupying a wing of her own.

First she introduced me to the imperious and formidable Mrs Owen, the ancient, white-haired mother of Cumnor’s owner, Dr Owen. Her wits and tongue remained as sharp as newly-honed razors despite her years, and she expressed her opinions with such utter and adamant conviction, one would have thought God Himself had descended from Heaven to present them to her chiselled on stone tablets, as if they were as sacred and inviolable as the Ten Commandments. She prodded my hip with her cane and bade me turn round for her inspection, then gave a grunt that left the question dangling of whether she approved of me or not.

Then there was an ageing beauty named Elizabeth Oddingsells who emphasised her voluptuous charms to the fullest degree with dramatic and expert use of henna, rouge, kohl, tight lacing, and a skilful dressmaker with more than a touch of flamboyance in his or her needle. It was only just after breakfast, and she was wearing peacock feathers in her hair. She showed an amazing amount of bosom despite the cold, taking the court fashion for low bodices to a most daring extreme, which provoked Mrs Forster to lean in close and whisper into my ear that she was known to even rouge her nipples and on many an occasion had suffered the “accidental embarrassment” of having her breasts pop out the top of her gown. “But don’t you be fooled by it, if it happens—and it will, if you stay long enough at Cumnor—she used to practise making it happen when she was a girl and by now has it down to an art. Some women are content to smile coyly and bat their eyelashes, but that’s not enough for Lizzy Oddingsells—
she
has to burst out of her bodice. She even did it once while feigning to faint at my uncle’s funeral and had every man there rushing to help her. One man forgot to watch where he put his feet and fell into the open grave in his haste to reach her.”

I found Mrs Forster’s manner towards Mrs Oddingsells curiously frosty, colder than mere disapproval merited, and after the introductions had been made and Mrs Oddingsells had retreated to sit some distance away with her peacock-plumed head bent over her embroidery, Mrs Forster confided their history to me.

“If I were you, my dear Amy, I would not get too close to Lizzy Oddingsells. She’s a sly one and more like than not to smile in your face one day and stab you in the back the next; she has a habit of betraying her friends.” She went on to explain that in their girlhood they had been the very best of friends. “We were so close, people thought us joined at the hip; she was like a big sister to me. Now …” She sighed and shook her head. “Well, let’s just say that red bodice she is wearing is an apt choice. She’s my husband’s harlot, and there’s no use denying it or trying to sugarcoat it; the truth is what it is.”

The affair had begun when Mrs Forster was
“enceinte”,
she said delicately, patting her stomach to make sure I got her meaning, in case I did not know this fashionable French word that ladies now preferred to use because they thought it sounded prettier and more elegant than to say that they were “with child” or “pregnant”.

“Men have their needs and are prone to straying, like randy tomcats, at such a time,” she continued, and by the way she spoke and shrugged, so plain and matter-of-fact, I gathered that Mrs Forster was not overly troubled by this and simply accepted it as the way of the world and a woman’s lot.

But what she could
never
forgive or forget was “that Lizzy Oddingsells’s putting herself forward like the brazen slut she is and luring
my
husband into her bed! Afterwards, she tried to tell me she had done it for
my
sake, and for my children, saying better that it be her, my best friend, who had me and my babies in her heart, than some other woman who would use her wanton wiles to put money in her purse and jewels and silk gowns upon her person, and take food out of our mouths and clothes off our backs for the glory and greed of her own self. Humph!” Mrs Forster’s exclamation showed just what she thought of Mrs Oddingsells’s charitable explanation. “If my children and I did not live in such proximity to her, I would wish the plague upon her! If she fell facedown in a mud puddle, I would not stoop to help her up; rather, I would plant my foot on the back of her head and gladly hold her down and watch her drown!”

After these harsh and heated words, Mrs Forster flashed me a smile and patted my hand. “I
know
that you, my dear Amy, will understand
exactly
how I feel,” she said in what was obviously a discreetly veiled reference to my husband’s dalliance with the Queen.

I nodded and assured her that I did, though I was right sorry, I said, to see what began as such a loving and happy friendship end in such gall and bitterness.

The next person Mrs Forster introduced me to was a Dr Walter Bayly, who had just set up his practice in Oxford. Robert had made inquiries about the various physicians practising near Cumnor and had settled on this promising young man as the perfect one to undertake my cure. He had even sent him potions prepared by the Queen’s own apothecary to give to me, including more hemlock pills, explaining that I was “sorely heavy with an overabundance of melancholy, but, like a naughty child, My Lady is reluctant to take her medicine, and I hope you, good Dr Bayly, can persuade her to do what is best for her; I am putting my trust
entirely
in
you
.” I know he wrote these words, as Dr Bayly gently chided me for my recalcitrance and read me this snippet of my husband’s letter, saying afterwards, with a cajoling smile, “Now, we must not let Lord Robert down.”

He was a very kind and comely young man, tall, lean, and red-haired with eyes the pale green colour of gooseberries. And, according to Mrs Forster, local gossip said that since his arrival many ladies had found need to consult him, for their own sake or that of their children, even for the most trifling ailments that they could have easily treated themselves with their own grandmothers’ remedies: time, rest, and common sense. Even Mrs Oddingsells had consulted him because she always broke out in a rash after eating strawberries, and Dr Bayly had calmly advised her not to eat them.

Like a court gallant, he kissed my hand when we met and sat by my bed and exchanged pleasantries with me, putting me right at ease, before he inquired about what ailed me. But when I bared my breast to him, he went as white as milk. He stepped quickly away from me and went to stand by the window, staring out, bracing himself against the stone sill.

With his back still turned to me, he asked what had been done for me thus far. I told him of the remedies Pirto and I had tried when we first thought it merely an abscess, but when I mentioned the hemlock pills Robert had given me, prescribed by the Queen’s own physician, he spun round abruptly with his whole body atremble and his eyes staring wide, like a man who had just been frightened out of his mind.

I felt a sudden coldness like a shawl of ice thrown over my shoulders and a prickling upon the nape of my neck and turned to see that the phantom grey friar was standing beside my bed, like a sentinel keeping watch over me. For a moment I wondered if Dr Bayly could see him too, but I knew better than to ask, lest he think me mad.

Dr Bayly made a valiant effort to compose himself. He swallowed hard, and in a jumbled rush of words spoken so fast I could barely make sense of them, he said, if I heard aright, that I had no need of the physick my husband had supplied for me. He thought the suffering the hemlock pills would cause would far outweigh any slight benefit that might be derived from taking them. With sorrow pooled within his eyes, he said that he was sorry, “so very sorry,” but there was nothing he could do for me, that I was in God’s hands and must trust Him to protect me and effect my cure if such was His desire. And then he was gone, rapidly mumbling something about rest, prayer, and fresh air.

And he never did come back to see me, not even when I worsened and Mrs Forster, wringing her hands and unable to bear my pain, sent for him and begged him to help me; still he declined to treat me, to interfere or risk being blamed for something that was none of his doing and that he wanted no part of. He was, after all, a young man just starting out in his profession, and if my death were laid upon his shoulders, it would be a burden he could never shake off. And if those higher placed so desired it, he might even pay for my death with his own life to disguise the misdeeds of others.