The Lady and the Poet (20 page)

‘Tsk, Mistress Ann, look not back at her. Tis a stewhouse and well known for it. The Castle upon Hope Inn, they call it, though castle it be not, and those within are certainly not ladies, I can warrant you. Not far now to the market.’

I was in no hurry. For the first time in weeks I had forgotten my cares, wrapped up in so many diverse sights and sounds. Yet one thing penetrated my gaiety: the gangs of children I had seen before, some so young it seemed as if they had not long learned to walk, others carried in the arms of their brothers or sisters not much older themselves, all looking tired and pinched and hungry, their great hollow eyes following me as if they could see through my disguise and knew I came from a lord’s house where there was so much plenty that the master’s dogs ate better than they.

‘Aye,’ Joan commented, ‘there’s one crop that is always in season, more’s the pity, unlike your aunt’s apples. The poorer the mother the more children she brings into the world, it seems to me. I suppose the poor have few other comforts. Since the failure of the harvests they flock to London from the country villages. Oft times they abandon their children if they can’t feed them, hoping for the goodwill of the parish.’

‘And does the parish help them?’

‘Not if it can help it. It would rather send them away like stray dogs. And this new law now, which taxes us all to build a Poor House, no one knows if that will help or hinder.’

She pulled her shawl round herself more tightly, ignoring the gaggle of ragged children that followed her, their hands outstretched.

‘Shoo!’ She stamped her feet and the children scattered, never speaking, like a crowd of tiny phantoms.

‘Hang on to your purse, mistress. Innocence isn’t always what it seems in this part of town.’

Just before Borough Market we saw a milkmaid standing in the shade of the trees, her pails hung over her shoulders, talking to a customer. I stopped a while, recognizing her face from a previous sortie with Joan. It was the young girl we had seen before, whom I gave money to, forgetting I was dressed as a servant.

She looked at me a long time, taking in the fine clothes under my cloak, wondering if her eyes deceived her, and then there burst on to the scene a great commotion.

A young boy, tall and gangling, like the heron that feeds at the pond at Loseley, yet dirty, thin and ragged, aged about twelve or thirteen years, ran around the corner and, seeing the milkmaid, clung to her as if the hangman pursued him and only she could grant him pardon.

‘Sarah! Please! He’s after me! He’ll kill me if he catches me. I’ll not stay with him, I won’t!’

Out of an alley appeared a rough-looking man and I saw both Sarah and the youth cringe back. The man was ill-dressed and reeked of the alehouse. He growled like a hungry bear and made as if to knock the lad down. ‘Release that boy!’

The milkmaid threw me a look so desperate and beseeching that I took a step forward and stood between the boy and the man who sought him.

‘Stop!’ I stood my ground fearlessly. ‘Who are you and why is this boy so frightened that he clings thus to that young woman?’

‘I am John Maunsley, tanner. And who might you be that places herself between me and my lawful apprentice?’

I stood on my dignity in the way I had seen my sister Mary do with troublesome servants.

‘I am Mistress Ann More,’ I replied in a voice as cold as the east wind that shrivels the new buds of spring. ‘Daughter to Sir George More, knight and Deputy Sheriff in the Counties of Surrey and Sussex.’

‘Huh,’ he grunted, looking at me warily at this mention of officialdom, keeping his distance as if I might suddenly produce a warrant from my mantle. ‘And what does Mistress Ann More have to do with my apprentice, Wat, who cannot even be trusted to stir the hides without weeping for his mother?’

‘I did not weep for my mother!’ the boy Wat squared up, braver now that he perceived he had a protectress. ‘I have no mother, naught but my sister Sarah.’ He turned to her despairingly. ‘He makes me do the cruellest jobs, the ones no other will do, dipping my hands in stuff that bites and flays my skin. Look!’ He held out hands that were blistered and flaking, running with open sores. ‘And then I must stir the skins in vats of dog dirt to make them supple!’

I recoiled at this hellish vision and knew that I must do what I could to help.

‘He’ll soon grow accustomed,’ growled the tanner. ‘Skin soon hardens; look at mine.’ He held out his own hands for inspection. ‘Twenty years of tanning and hands soft as a babe’s.’

‘You never go near the vats, that’s why!’ insisted the boy, recovering his spirit. ‘With this new law you have boys to do it for you, of nine or ten, sent by the parish, and no questions asked!’

‘They get board and lodging.’

‘Sleeping in your cellar with the rats to tell us stories, and mouldy bread to eat or rotting kitchen stuff you buy cheap from city kitchen maids!’

I stifled a smile at the boy’s way with words. The tanner had not yet managed to crush his imagination.

‘You learn a trade! That is what the law requires of me. I know my duty.’ His attempt at piety disgusted me more than his cruelty, especially if he believed it himself.

‘Come! If you come not, I will fetch the Watch.’

‘Please, mistress…’ interceded the boy’s sister. ‘I knew you were kind when you gave me that coin before.’ She thrust the boy towards me so I could feel his bones through his torn clothing and study the sooty mark of a bruise across his nose. I looked hard at him, taking in his thick black hair, skin so pale the veins showed blue beneath, and yet despite all there was a spark of surprising wit in his eyes.

‘I would take him with me as I deliver my milk but the parish
would send him back to the tanner. He is quick, mistress, and can even read the signs in the shops and market. And he has such a good heart! Take him with you, mistress, for the sake of our sainted mother, who died in childbed. Please!’

Perhaps some angel sent those words to her.

I thought at once of my sister Bett, not yet cold in her shroud, and the guilt that I carried around with me like a sack, wondering if I had served to hasten her end. Helping this boy might lighten that load.

‘I will take him,’ I said without stopping to think if my kindly aunt and uncle would want another servant.

‘But he is my bounden apprentice, sent to me under the law!’ The tanner tried to grab him back.

‘How much would you have spent on this boy’s board and keep for the term of his apprenticeship?’

‘Ah, well,’ his sharp eyes widened, ‘the term of the apprenticeship is not fixed, but it would last some years. Tis till he has learned his trade, like.’

‘Say five years. And I will be saving you the cost of board and lodging for him.’

Wat laughed bitterly at this.

‘And I will be losing the labour he would have provided me.’

‘Three angels. I will give you three gold angels, to be sent to your address tomorrow.’

‘And you will make no more of it with your father, the Deputy So-and-so of Surrey?’ He glanced unwillingly at Wat’s injured hands.

‘I will make no more of it. Come, Wat.’ I held his arm and pulled him with me through the crowd that had gathered to watch our transaction.

‘May I tell Sarah where I will be found?’

I looked back at the tanner, not wishing him to know of Wat’s new whereabouts. ‘Joan, tell Sarah quietly where her brother will be living.’

Unwillingly Joan lumbered through the crowd and whispered in Sarah’s ear. The milkmaid’s eyes opened in alarm at so great a change in status for her brother.

‘What about my lady’s apples?’ grumbled Joan as we headed swiftly back towards the river. ‘And what is my mistress going to say about the arrival of this lad?’

‘Apples, did you say, mistress?’ Wat piped up, a merry look displacing the fearfulness from his blue eyes. ‘I can show you where to get good apples. The tanner’s wife is with child, poor lady, can you imagine how she…?’ He thought better of the question. ‘No. She had a craving for Orange Pippins. We were not allowed them, of course, but I was sent to find bushels of them. I can show you where to find the very best.’

He led the way down a narrow alley, which had us looking fearfully behind in case the tanner or any other malcontents lurked there to do us ill, and after several twists and turns, once narrowly avoiding the slops from an upstairs window, we found ourselves slap in the centre of Borough Market, next to a stall piled high with vegetables and fruit.

Yet there was no sign of apples.

‘He keeps them under the trestle, wrapped in straw against the winter frosts,’ Wat informed us.

Joan filled her basket with Orange Pippins, so well stored they held still the misty tang of autumn. As we walked back to the wherry I handed one to Wat as his reward. He looked at it with wide eyes, as if it were one of the golden apples of Hera.

‘Thank you, mistress, for your great kindness.’

We were silent on the wherry crossing. Joan occasionally raised her eyebrows at me then shrugged and moved away from Wat, as if he were not an injured and oppressed child, but a plague carrier.

When we got to the steps at York House she clambered out as fast as she could, no doubt eager to reach the steward’s table to gossip to the other servants about Mistress Ann’s madness.

‘What is this place, mistress?’ Wat asked, overawed, as we walked towards the vast mansion ahead, with its towers and turrets and its three great windows looking from the Great Hall into the gardens.

‘It is called York House, my uncle’s home. I am sure he and my aunt will have some place for you in their household if you have no objection to hard work.’

As we walked through the gate, Wat at my back glancing behind him all the while, as if expecting a hue and cry to follow us, I found that the gardens were not empty. Two men, laughing and talking, stood at the river end, half hidden by an apple tree.

It was Master John Donne. He turned at my helter-skelter arrival. ‘Good morrow, Mistress More.’ He raised an eyebrow at my rough companion but said nothing, assuming, I supposed, that I would offer an explanation. ‘This is my very good friend Henry Wotton.’

Master Wotton bowed deeply. He was a thickset gentleman, with lively eyes and a nimble gait that belied his frame, and a fine thick red-brown beard, which seemed to have grown in greater abundance as it left his head. ‘Mistress More, a pleasure. I have long admired your uncle as a fair and honest servant of the Queen. Not so common in these days, I assure you.’

‘Thank you, Master Wotton. He is a good man.’

‘Master Wotton and I are old friends, and he currently is secretary to the Earl of Essex.’

I smiled without knowing I did so.

‘Why smile you, Mistress More?’ asked Master Wotton, intrigued.

‘I heard so much at Court about the Earl and numerous ladies, I imagine his secretary would be kept very busy with love letters.’

Master Wotton laughed loudly. ‘The Earl is a man of action. He believes in deeds rather than words.’

‘Yes. It was the deeds the ladies talked of.’ I remembered Wat, who had backed away into the garden and was hiding by the wall. I was beginning, as we approached York House, to wonder at my aunt’s reception of him. And then, seeing Master Donne, a happy inspiration occurred to me.

‘Master Donne, do you have a servant?’

For reasons I understood not, Master Donne and his friend both laughed out loud.

‘Not at present. I would rather shake out my own doublet than pay another to do it ill. Servants, I have found, are not always worth the trouble of employing them.’

‘That is because you have not met the right one. For this boy, by name of Wat—do you have another name, Wat?’

‘Snaresbrook, mistress.’

‘Wat Snaresbrook. Wat is urgently looking for employment and would make an excellent servant.’

Master Donne’s answer was the bark of a laugh.

‘You have found the wrong man, Mistress More! I have had enough
of boys to last me several lifetimes! The last I employed helped himself to my best clothes and ran away with them.’

‘But Wat is honest, are you not, Wat?’

‘As honest as the day is long, mistress.’ Wat bowed as he had seen Master Wotton do a moment back, smiling all the while. ‘And mayhap the night time too in spite of all the wicked deeds that do happen then!’

‘God save us from a boy who can speak so eloquently!’ murmured Master Donne, shaking his head.

‘Come, John, a poet cannot object to the clever use of words, surely?’ smiled Master Wotton. Yet his friend shook his head.

‘Mistress More, I live here in York House. If I had lodgings of my own, perhaps…’

‘I am sure my uncle, the Lord Keeper, would have no objection if I talk to him. Wat could sleep on a pallet on your floor as Prudence oftentimes does on mine at Loseley.’

‘Heigh, heigh, go not so fast, mistress…’

‘Consider it at least. Wat could run errands for you. To the courts.’

‘And the alehouse,’ added Wat. ‘Or the stewhouse.’

‘Wat!’ I scolded, turning back to Master Donne.

‘The other day you asked if there was aught you could do to relieve the misery of my sister’s loss.’ I knew this to be blackmail but the cause was honest. ‘This lad’s mother died in childbirth like my sister. Taking him in seemed a kind of expiation.’

‘Which you are generously passing on to me?’ The words could have been cruelly said, but there was a kindness in them. ‘For pity’s sake, what has happened to him?’ He picked up one of the boy’s hands, not even flinching at the oozing sores.

‘He was apprenticed to a tanner who made him put his hands into cruel and fiery liquids.’

‘And this tanner, to whom he was apprenticed, might I expect a call from him demanding the return of his property?’

I bit my lip. ‘Very probably. But he may be daunted to discover his charge now lives in the household of the Keeper of the Great Seal.’

‘A relief. I would not wish to have dangerous liquids flung in my face by an angry tanner.’

‘Never fear, sir,’ Wat informed him helpfully. ‘Master Maunsley is far too scared even to touch the stuff himself.’

‘A relief indeed.’