Anne of the Fens (2 page)

The sermon went on for hours, and it was especially hard to listen because of having to stand. I shifted my weight from foot to foot and thought about the fair, the dance music, and the words in the play. The young man with the blond curls and the bright red tunic kept coming into my mind. He was the first man ever to have touched me. I could still feel the pressure of his fingers on my back. We would have twirled and twirled until I was dizzy. When he pulled me to him, it was like a lover's embrace, even if we were dancing. I felt weak just thinking about it.

I had begun reading my Bible when I was six years old. Why do I always have to be good? I almost spoke it aloud, and I wondered if I would be struck dead on the spot. Nothing happened.

Nobody understood. Patience, the prettiest of all of us four sisters, was more than a year younger. She was my friend as well as my sister, but she was too good to understand me. Sarah understood wickedness, but she was too young to understand the ways I wanted to be bad. I wanted to be held by a young man, to feel his arms about me, as I had in the dance. Kissing might be nice as well, but I did not know how that would feel.

Our Father who art in Heaven. I tried to say the Lord's Prayer over and over as a way of calming myself and forcing my feelings down — down deep into my toes where they would not bother me. I wanted to be held.

God would punish me. He had already punished me, with the illnesses I often suffered. I thought of the pock-marked man at the sweets stall at the fair and I shuddered again. If I did not stop these thoughts, I would probably get the pox. Did I have a fever? I would die in pain. I wanted to be held.

At last, Reverend Cotton was getting louder and waving his arms, meaning he was coming to the end. After he and the rest of the congregation filed out, Sarah and I found the rest of the family. Father was talking to Simon, his assistant and my tutor, and some other friends.

“Masterful, how he manages to avoid being arrested for treason, or at least being removed as minister,” Simon said.

Father was so taken with the sermon that he forgot about Sarah escaping into the fair. But when Simon left for his horse that would take him back to the castle, and the rest of us started to climb into the carriage, Father turned to Sarah and roared,

“You hare-brained minnow, where did you go?”

Sarah quickly said that she had seen a cat that was just like Josie, who had left home and not returned. The cat had run into the fair and she had chased her. Then she was caught among all the people and could not move. I said that I, too, had become caught in the crowd, and we had only found each other by chance. I prayed to God to forgive my lie. Father looked at us suspiciously.

“You didn't set out to see the fair?”

“Oh no, Father,” Sarah said.

Father pulled himself up to the top of the carriage with the coachman, and we were all relieved. I wished I could lie as well as Sarah, and then I wished that I were a better person, not so much like Sarah.

We helped Mother into the best seat in the carriage, facing forward on the outside, where there was less dust. Baby Mercy jumped in next, sitting close to Mother. We shouldn't have called Mercy a baby, as she was seven, just a year younger than Sarah, but the name stuck because she acted like a baby and Mother spoiled her. Mercy lisped.

That left Sarah and me and Patience, my sister closest in age, for the other side of the carriage, facing backwards. In the carriage we rocked and jogged along, eating a lunch of bread and hard cheese. Father was proud of our carriage with its two horses and its wide seats and small windows. It was not as fancy as the Earl's, which had leather seats, but it carried the whole family and it was handsome. The Earl often came to services in Boston with his family in the big carriage with the gold decorations, but he had not come today.

Mother sighed, “If only we were going back to our house...” Mother loved our house in Boston, and hated living in the castle. This was a difficult time in England, and Father needed to help the Earl who was quite a young man. We were missing afternoon services because it would take hours to travel the twelve miles back to Tattershall Castle. I said nothing, but secretly I loved that we were living in the castle.

There was a great deal that I did not say to others. As during the sermon that morning, thoughts of Romeo and Juliet and the young man in the red tunic began to swirl through my mind. The wooden bench was hard, and Sarah's elbow poked into my side.

Finally I fell asleep, the wheels of the carriage seeming to say, “to be held, to be held, to be held.”

I
WOKE UP
at a sharp pain on my ankle. I started to slap at it then realized it was a flea. I had a special way of killing fleas, rolling them between my fingers till they were stunned and then pressing them between my fingernails. Catching them was the hard part. Sarah and I were probably covered with fleas from wading through the sheep. I looked over at Sarah, who was gazing out the window. Tiny black specks hopped against the white of her collar.

Patience was asleep in one corner, her dark hair peeping out of her bonnet, and Mother was asleep in the corner on the other side. Baby Mercy was leaning on Mother and pulling at her arm. “Mother, Tharah kicked me!”

I followed Sarah's gaze out the window, at the wide fens with their high grasses. It was good to see them green, after the dead winter.

Mother woke and chastised Sarah. We crossed the moat to the castle just then. The drawbridge was down, as it usually is, and Eric, the guard, let us through without stopping us. It was late in the afternoon, the sky overcast and damp, when we got out of the carriage.

Mother muttered about our lodgings on the third floor, as she always did. I heard something about huge cold rooms, dampness, and the uneven stairs.

Before we had left for the castle this spring, I overheard a conversation between her and Father.

“You are my wife, no?”

I did not hear her reply.

“Then you cannot live twelve miles away from me.”

That was one argument I was glad Father had won, as we would have stayed with Mother if she had remained in Boston.

U
SUALLY
I
DID
not mind the stairs, but tonight I was coughing and out of breath by the time we reached the third floor. Patience and I headed to the room we shared off the main hall. It was a small room on the south side of the castle. We liked that the sun came in early to wake us each morning, if only from a small slit of a window. The room had no necessary. I did not like the smell of the rooms with necessaries, as the waste went down the channel in the castle wall to the ground or into the moat, and the room smelled. On the third floor the smell was less than lower down in the castle. I think that was why the Earl and his family lived on the fourth floor.

We began getting undressed for bed. I first took off the waistcoat I wore over my shift, the long shirt that we wore at all times, then the stomacher, the stuffed band of fabric we wore right below the waist to keep our skirts flaring out, and then the skirts themselves. I sighed over my blue skirt — it would take some poor laundress hours to get out the stains.

Patience took off her white starched bonnet with care, putting it on its stand. She sighed.

“What?”

“Only thinking of my ears.”

Patience believes that her ears are too large and that they stick out. She worries that when she marries and has to take off her bonnet on the first night, her husband, appalled, will want to call the whole thing off. Sarah calls her Rabbit, or Elephant.

“Stop it. They are fine. What if you were one of the Puritan martyrs who had their ears cut off? Now that would be ugly.”

“What a mean thing to say!”

It was, and I apologized. I had spoken from jealousy. Patience was beautiful, with pale skin, long dark hair, and gray-green eyes. I wished I could look like her. My own hair was brown with a reddish tint, straight like Patience's but unkempt, and I, like Patience, was glad to wear a bonnet, although we were hiding different things. I had freckles and, every now and then, a small blemish on my chin. My nose was too large, and my eyes sometimes had an unfocused look, because my vision was bad and things became blurry. Patience sometimes said my eyes were one of my good features, and that they were luminous. I was not quite sure what that meant, but it sounded nice. She also has said that, when I smiled, I became beautiful.

When I looked in Mother's Venetian mirror, I was so disappointed at the face that stared back at me. I would not want that person as a friend. Then I tried smiling, and it was not so bad.

There were more interesting things to talk about than our looks. As we got into bed, I told Patience what had happened, about chasing Sarah, the man who danced with me, and about the play — as much of the story as I had heard. The more I told her, the more I wanted to know the ending.

“What do you think might have happened at the friar's when they went to get married?” I asked.

Patience's body went stiff beside me in the bed.

“I do not know, but I know it is a sin for women to display themselves in a public play.”

I said she knew that the part was probably played by a young man, but she said nothing and turned away from me in the bed.

“Someone in the crowd said it was by Shakespeare. By now I have looked at all the books in the library and there are none by Shakespeare. How do you think I can find the ending?” I ignored her crossness.

“I do not know, and if I did, God knows I should not help you.”

Several minutes passed. Then Patience said, “I have heard Simon and Father speak of Shakespeare.”

“What did they say?” I sat up.

“You are pulling the blankets off me.”

I covered her with the blankets again, and she continued, “They said that the plays had humor if you overlooked the Godlessness.”

I could get no more out of her. As I began to fall asleep, feeling slightly feverish, I was startled when Patience sat up in bed. Now it was I who had no blankets.

“Selfish Anne!” Her voice was loud. “All the problems we are all facing and you want to read a heathen book about romance.”

“What do you mean, the problems we are all facing?” I said sleepily. When Patience got very angry, it was usually after she had thought for a while.

“Did you listen to a word of the sermon today? Do you know how angry the King will be if the Earl and Father do not pay the tax?”

“But the King's war and the tax are unjust. He disbanded Parliament because he knew they would not vote for the tax. Nobody should pay the tax.”

“The Earl and Father will be arrested and go to prison. We will have no father. Think about that for a while.”

I had seldom seen Patience, who always saw the good in me, so angry. I patted her arm and said yes, I was a selfish, thoughtless girl and of course I did not want Father and the Earl to be arrested. But she was still angry.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I was aware of Patience getting out of bed and slipping downstairs, the sun strong in the casement window. I woke again later to find her hovering over me and the sun already past the window. I groaned and turned over, every muscle in my body aching.

“Fen fever again,” Patience said, without the anger of the previous night. She did not say what we were both thinking, that I was being punished for my selfish thoughts.

Where we live many have fen fever, and some say it is due to the mosquitoes that swarm about the swampy ground. Once one gets the illness it is a part of life forever, bringing every few weeks or months a bout of high fever, trembling, and aching muscles. I find that, for me, it is brought on by fatigue. As I had chased Sarah into the fair and stood for hours in the church, I had worried that I would get sick.

Patience brought a wet cloth for my forehead and a flagon of beer for my thirst. She said that she would tell Mother I could not do chores, and she would tell Simon I would not come to the library for tutoring. The family was used to my illnesses.

Mother sent Marianne, the maid to the Earl's sister Arbella, to care for me. I loved talking to Marianne, as she knew all the gossip of the castle. She brought me wormwood in a tiny jar with a small wooden spoon. It tasted foul but it usually helped a bit with the aching. As I lay there, her long blond hair brushing over my face as she spooned medicine into me, something light struck me on the cheek. I looked down at a small wooden crucifix hanging from Marianne's neck. She saw it herself, jumped away, put the cross back inside her chemise, and turned a dull red.

“Marianne!”

“Are you going to tell?”

I did not answer.

She began to pace, head bowed over folded hands. Now that I knew it was there I could see the crucifix bouncing inside against her chemise. “Nobody knows. They would throw me out if they knew. I am a fine worker, I care for Arbella's things as though they were gold, I coddle her in every way, I—”

“I know.” I smiled at her, and she stopped pacing.

Everyone knew Marianne worked hard. I asked her how she had deceived us, and she sat on the bed, took a breath, and began her story. She said that her father was a Puritan, which I had assumed, as he came to services regularly.

“Father fell in love with my mother and only found she was a Catholic later. He married her, regardless, as long as she told no one. When I was a child I came upon her praying with a crucifix. The more she told me about the Catholic faith, the more I wanted it for myself. She has taken me to secret services. The castle chapel and the church across the way — they are so bare. It honors God to show beautiful pictures and statues of Him, to have crosses and gold, and song and splendor in a church.”

The chapel in the castle and the village church across the way were as bare as any Puritan could want. The village church, which had been built near the castle some two hundred years before, was big, though four of its size would have fit into the Boston church we had attended yesterday, and it had probably contained statues and pictures and crosses, which Puritans destroyed. Now, the only color in the gray of stone was the windows. I did love to see the light coming through the ones in the south, staining the stone floors yellow and red.