The Lady and the Poet (49 page)

Yet the morning dawned cold and wet, with a chill east wind that brought on his cough and put him a vile temper. ‘Now I shall have this throat to tease me all over Yuletide,’ he complained.

Even my offers of herb tisanes or making him a vest lined with goose grease met with a barked reply that it would be bolting the stable door after the horse had flown, so I kept my peace and waited.

The one unexpected joy was that Mary and Nick sent word they would also come to Loseley for the Christmas feast. I had known that Margaret and her husband came often, for Peckham was not so far away, and this year Sir John Oglander, betrothed to my sister Frances,
was also bidden. Mary also had chosen us over her grand Throckmorton relatives.

I had to pass a whole week yet before Mary arrived with all her children, and a coachload of luggage. I had wondered if Nick might stay in town, not wishing to kick his heels in the country away from all his usual pleasures, but instead he came with Mary and the children and in great good humour too.

‘Has not little Nick grown apace since you last saw him, Ann?’ he asked me, proud as a peacock with his little son. Mary had the goodness at least to flush, for I had seen him not long ago, when his mother took him on an assignation, as cover to meet her lover.

‘Look not so superior,’ Mary chided me sulkily, when she and I slipped away from the others, claiming we must hunt for ivy swags, and holly berries to decorate the hall. ‘For my sin is a drop in the great wide ocean compared to yours. Since all is passing calm at Loseley I assume you have not yet informed our father that you are a wedded woman?’

I shook my head.

‘Aye, I guessed as much. Then wait till after the feast is over for the sake of all the rest of us. Nick and I are reconciled and I would welcome a day of calm before another storm.’

I had thought that they seemed content in each other’s company. ‘What happened? You did not confess nor he discover?’

She shook her head and smiled her slanting smile. ‘Neither one. And I have no intention of telling him. Especially now that he has had the nod he will inherit from his uncle Francis, who owns the manor of Beddington and great estates to boot. All he must do is change his name to Carew and lead an honest life and he will be a rich man!’

‘And you a rich woman?’

Mary shrugged. ‘I will not be a rich woman since all will belong to Nick. I will be a woman married to a rich man.’ Her wicked laugh shook the air. ‘Still, it is better than a poor woman married to a poor man, with a rich father who refuses to help her.’

‘Mary,’ I meant what I said, ‘I am truly happy for you.’

‘As long as he keeps it. A fool and his money, as they say.’

‘Yes, but Nick is no fool. This may be the making of him.’

I could see the clear blue sky reflected in my sister’s eye and was glad for her.

‘He says he is turning over a new leaf and this time I credit it. He has not been to the bear baiting or the bowling alley for a month. He even chooses to stay at home rather than gamble at cards, so I have had no time or chance to meet the other gentleman.’

Although she admitted it not, I could see that Mary was happy to have her husband back and that her dalliance had been in part to distract herself from their many worries.

We took our booty of ivy and berries back to the house and offered them to Constance, who told us to give them to the groom since she had already completed her decorations.

And, indeed Constance, for her part, had decorated in a manner which led one to wonder if the Queen were coming on an unexpected visit. Her berries, not good enough in nature’s red, were painted with gold leaf and fixed behind every picture in the new gallery. The vast fireplace in the Great Hall was draped in red taffeta and cloth of gold, billowing together, and the same festooned over beams and banisters throughout the house until the effect was one of Christmas in the cat-house. At any moment I expected ladies of dubious virtue to appear, like those from the Castle upon Hope Inn, to drape themselves half-clad all down the stairwell.

Yet though my family was about me, I could not enjoy myself, but sat staring out of the great windows at the path from the turnpike, in case any message came from London.

It was almost Christmas when Wat rode up to the front door. I was on my feet in a flash and ran out to meet him, laughing, yet stopped when I saw how doleful was his face.

I took him round to the kitchen door and found him food and sustenance. ‘How does your master, Wat? Is he in good form?’

Wat shook his head. ‘He languishes. Between your absence and the war between the Lord Keeper and the Countess, the joy is all drained out of him. He has been to Court once or twice and still works hard for his master, yet never smiles. I wish you could be with him, mistress.’

I glanced behind at that, hoping none overheard us.

‘I will, Wat, as soon as ever I can.’ The sharp longing for him made my heart ache. ‘Tell him that my father is all good humour and I but wait for the moment. He should be at the ready to come.’

‘I will tell him.’

‘Give him this.’ I kissed Wat on the cheek so that he reddened to the colour of the westering sun as it sank over the river.

‘I hope he would not mistake me, mistress, if I gave him such a token.’ Wat grinned.

‘Wat,’ I laughed heartily at that, my mood lightening from the heavy burden of its worry. ‘There are scarce few certainties in this life of ours but my John loving men is not amongst them.’

Finding a chance when my father’s mood was light and he was without company turned out to be like opening a thousand oysters and finding not a single pearl. If he was alone he was ill-tempered, and, in company, unapproachable. And over the twelve days of Christmas there was more company at Loseley than I had ever witnessed. It was as if, now the house was finally his, he would show all its finery to every person in the county above the rank of yeoman, and even a few of those. The clerk of the kitchen was forever slaughtering more sheep and oxen till I wondered if anything that could low or baa was left in all Surrey.

He asked me what had befallen my sister’s masque and startled me by declaring we should have it here. In the end when Twelfth Night had come and gone and I had not yet spoken, I vowed to screw up my courage at last, no matter what the portents for his mood. The house had been quieter for the last days and I had hopes that my father planned no more entertaining.

Today he had seemed in a passing good mood. He had praised Frances’ stitchery and said that Sir John Oglander was a lucky man, then complimented his wife on the variety of her table, and even offered Mary’s husband a game of backgammon, which my father won, though whether Nick allowed him this distinction I know not.

This, then, should be the night. I would wait until he was mellow after supper, with wine taken, and his admiring family all around him, then request a private word. However much he hated my disclosure he would have the night to sleep on it and I my sisters’ help to protect me from his ire.

I dressed with extra care, wearing all the jewels my mother had willed me, both to give me courage and to remind him of her whom he had lost, trusting he would not want to lose me also by his final banishment.

The gown I chose was the one he had told me I looked well in, and so that I might also solicit the support of our Saviour, I added the small gold cross which my grandmother had given me.

As I walked slowly down the great staircase, willing myself to have all the courage I could muster, I met with William, my father’s yeoman of the buttery. ‘William,’ I smiled at this ancient gentleman, ‘I have a matter of some moment which I intend to tell my father of this night. Could you make sure his glass is never empty, for I have a favour to ask of him and am sure he will be the more accepting with the help of Bacchus.’

‘Do you, Mistress Ann? Then I will do all I can to assist you. Yet your father is no great drinker, much though he fills up the glasses of others.’

‘Do your best!’

‘Yes, mistress, I will that.’ He winked broadly at me. ‘And good luck with your favour.’

The one enlivener of my gloom was the arrival of Sir John Oglander, who had come only this evening after staying with his brother in London.

He had dressed for dinner in the unusual ensemble of an Indian prince, complete with yellow silken turban, sent him by a trader friend. ‘Know you, Mistress More, the natives who wear them in that great continent never cut their hair and it grows nigh on six feet long. Imagine.’ He pointed to his own thinning locks. ‘To think I have trouble hanging on to six inches.’

‘Depends where you put them, John,’ remarked my brother-in-law, Nick, with a cackle.

Sir John glanced at him wonderingly, not understanding a word, simply looking puzzled and a little wounded for he knew he was the butt of Nick’s joke yet knew not why.

And kind Sir John went on to compound his sin still further by informing all that his brother was a tradesman. ‘Aye, Martin is a mercer, at the sign of the Hen and Chicken in Cheapside, and a good one too. You must go to him if you need aught in that line, Mistress Ann.’

He did not notice the sniggers that were spreading amidst the other guests. ‘Do you not think it sensible, Mistress Ann, that even a gentleman should have trade to prevent him becoming too high?’

I looked down the long table at the well-fed faces that had eaten more at this one feast than many had in a month, and how they laughed at the idea of working for their living. And I thought also of my secret husband, whose father had been an ironmonger, be it a great one, and how they would wrinkle their brows in distaste at such a low profession.

‘An honest day’s work would do you no harm, Nick.’ My brother-in-law stayed his goblet halfway to his mouth and looked at me in surprise.

‘Now Ann becomes a moralist also.’

‘She is right, husband,’ Mary seconded, though her voice was teasing. ‘A week in a mercer’s shop, so you had to keep to the clock and not go cocking or to the Globe would hurt you not at all.’

‘God’s blood, Mary!’ Nick banged his goblet onto the table spilling his wine.

In the midst of all the sound and fury Sir John leaned closer to me. ‘And were you in town yourself not long ago, Mistress Ann?’

‘I was, Sir John. My father and I were staying in his lodgings at Charing Cross.’

‘Then it was indeed you I glimpsed! I thought as much! I saw you one day coming out of the chapel hard by the Savoy Hospital when we walked homewards from the Convent garden. I said, “Martin, look, there is Mistress More, Sir George’s daughter, sister to my betrothed.” I meant to come and greet you but you were talking to some great lady astride her horse.’

At his words I felt drops of sweat gather in my palms and my throat closed over so I dared not trust my voice to answer.

And before I could think of how to pass the question off, my father answered for me. ‘Indeed, you interest me very much, Sir John.’ I felt a sharp breath of fear at his words, as if a crypt had been opened and the foul air released. ‘For I cannot recall, Ann, any reason why you would need to go to such a scandalous place as the Savoy Chapel.’ I felt his eyes upon me flaying away the skin until my innermost being was exposed. ‘Unless it were to contract a secret marriage which had been expressly forbidden by your father.’

‘WELL, ANN,’ MY
father demanded, his face contorted like one of the evil spirits carved into Loseley’s great chalk fireplace, ‘have you no answer for me? For if you have indeed dared to do such a thing, make no bones, I will have so immeasurably unwelcome a marriage annulled! Speak!’

At my continued silence he raised his hand as if to strike.

Mary stepped in front of me, shielding my body with her own, as poor Sir John looked on in horror at the consequence of his innocent question. ‘And this is the gentle treatment you apportion to your daughters, sir! If so, no wonder they seek protection elsewhere!’

‘And you are hardly better!’ My father tried to push her away so roughly that her husband had to leap forward and intervene.

‘You should control your wife, sir!’ he hissed at Nick. ‘She does you no credit.’

Nick shepherded Mary protestingly away. ‘This is a Christian country, Father, and may our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your soul for such behaviour.’

‘Look to your own soul, daughter. It is your sister who needs God’s mercy if one hundredth of this tale is true, for she will have broken every law of church and custom. I thank God that such a marriage, performed in secret without my knowledge or permission, would certainly never stand.’

At his words I heard a great ringing in my ears as of water tumbling over me, twisting and drowning me, so that I had to gasp for air.

‘See, Father, the effect of your threats on Ann, she is fainting away.’

‘Your sister is not so feeble as to pull that woman’s trick.’ He took my chin in his hand, the parody of a lover’s gesture, and pinched it hard. ‘Since you have denied nothing, go now to your chamber where you will stay, speaking to none, not even your sisters, while I discover the truth of this matter. Go!’