The Lady and the Poet (5 page)

I found him in his library, my favourite room. Panelled in finest English oak, whose wooden glory had been so carefully crafted by London carpenters to his detailed design, the library was covered on all four sides by shelves, and with small heads of Grandfather’s favourite writers peering out as if to say ‘Read me!’ My grandfather was passing proud of his collection since few individuals possessed libraries, and none so splendid and well stocked as his. From my first years he had encouraged me to read whatever I chose.

Since many books were in Latin or Greek it took me some years of study before I accepted his offer, but once I had acquired some learning
in these I would sit in one corner where there was a long low window seat and lose myself in stories of the heroic tales of Ulysses or Hector. Now and then I would stop to look out at the unfolding landscape when the mist lay over the valley or some lone pheasant had strayed out across the lawn, his silly croaking cry belying the finery of his gold and red feathers.

Above the mantelpiece the arms and initials of Queen Elizabeth were carved, to commemorate her various visits to Loseley and to remind us of our important place in the scheme of things.

My grandfather sat in his favourite chair, dozing underneath his portrait painted by one Lucas de Heere, whose work he had admired in Flanders. My sisters shuddered at this image since, alongside the depiction of Grandfather, all clad in black as he ever was, it also contained a grinning skull, resembling Grandfather in every feature, staring back fit to terrify the onlooker.

Yet it was Grandfather who had taken me on his knee, not long after my mother died when I was so young a maid, and smiled at me tenderly. ‘In life, death is always with us, Ann, which is why I like this picture. Yet your mother will never leave you. One day you will marry a noble man and have fine children of your own. And you will remember your mother, whom you were named after, and she will smile down upon your children from Heaven where she resides with our eternal Father.’

Ever after, I loved the portrait that scared my sisters so, for it linked me to the love of my grandfather and my lost mother also.

Although he was busy with his work as sheriff of Surrey and Sussex and subsidy commissioner on behalf of Her Majesty, Grandfather took two naps a day, as regular as the tick of his beloved clocks. Sometimes I would be there when he awoke to bring him a tankard of small beer to ease his thirst on awaking.

I did so today. The smile he gave me was of such sweetness.

‘Good afternoon, granddaughter,’ he greeted me. ‘Are you recovered from your galliards and your corantos last night?’

‘Grandfather, I am. Have you heard the news?’

‘That your sister has left or that you are to go to London?’

I laughed. Of course he would know. Grandfather knew everything. He had, in his youth, been one of the most trusted advisors of
the Crown, seeing so much of the Queen that she, making sport with him over the sombre clothes he always wore, dubbed him her ‘black husband’—much to the stormy looks from my grandmother, though she hid them from Her Majesty.

‘That I am to go to London.’

‘A little wounding that my granddaughter looks so happy to be leaving us behind in our provincial hovel while she seeks the gilded guise of the courtier.’

‘My lord grandfather! You know I have no time for Court doings. But Loseley will be flat without my dearest sister, Bett.’

‘And flatter still without you, sweet Ann. But I have a bone to pick with you, young woman. I find neither my Ovid nor my Catullus and unless your sisters have hired a Latin master or your grandmother has taken to reading the classics instead of receipt books on the pickling of cowcumbers, then the culprit must be you.’

‘I am sorry. I will return them to your shelves at once.’

‘Thank you, Ann.’ And then as an afterthought: ‘Tell not your father of your reading habits though. There are passages in Ovid that a young girl’s eyes should not be exposed to.’

I knew he talked of the
Ars Amtoria
which indeed had brought a flush to my cheek when I delved discreetly into it, yet I pretended I knew not what he referred to.

‘If he thought you had read such passages of Ovid your father would choke on his plate of meats.’

‘But the Queen reads Ovid, Grandfather, and has done since she was my own age. My cousin Francis told me so. His father was her Latin Secretary so he must be right.’

‘The Queen can do what she likes. The same is not true of all her subjects. I hope I have done the right thing to encourage you to read as widely as I have.’

‘Of course you have, Grandfather. How can learning and knowledge ever be a bad thing?’

‘In men, yes. But women? Learning is dangerous in women; many say it makes them cunning, like foxes.’

I kissed my grandfather’s brow. ‘Then I will be cunning as a fox and hide my learning from all but you.’

‘I fear it will curb your taste for ordinary life.’

‘And frighten off husbands?’

‘God ordained women to be wives and mothers. It is an important estate.’

‘I know, Grandfather. Yet perhaps it might frighten off the wrong kind of husband.’

‘Your grandmother and I will miss you.’

I took his hand, all seamed with veins, and kissed it.

‘After all, who will be Ratcatcher in Chief when you are gone?’

The thought of Frances’ revelation about my suitor came into my mind, the one shadow on my newly sunny horizon. ‘Grandfather…’ The hesitation in my voice made him look up.

‘Yes, Ann?’

‘Do you know of a gentleman called Manners?’

The expression in his eyes, like that of a weasel with someone’s pet mouse in its jaws, told me all.

‘Ann, my Ann,’ he replied gently, the paper thinness of his skin suddenly reminding me of the skull in the portrait. ‘You have to wed some time. There is no other calling for a woman.’

I walked out into the grounds to imprint them on my memory. I loved this house, its peace and stark grey beauty. But I knew also that life was not as easy for others as it had been for us. I had seen the hordes of wandering beggars, driven off their land by enclosures for sheep, and how they ended up being shuffled from parish to parish, or chased away with sticks, since no one wanted to pay for their upkeep. Some of them ended up in the manor courts my grandfather presided over. I had witnessed the bad harvests also, four of them in cruel succession, that had blighted the life of the villagers, making them thin and pale and anxious, only kept from starving by the pigs they each kept in their small cottages.

Indeed there was so little corn that the Privy Council had instructed my grandfather as sheriff to impose a ban on the unneedful use of it in the brewing of strong beer and to order the closure of the many ale and tippling houses—an unpopular measure if ever there were one.

I knew that life in England was divided and nowhere so much as at the Court, where I would be visiting. And yet I could not suppress a
thrill of excitement. London seemed not so much twenty-five miles away, as the other side of the world.

Life for me was about to change and I was glad of it because, truth to tell, now that Bett had become a married woman I knew even less what I wished or how I might achieve it.

I took one last look at the green valleys, the blackthorn hedges a froth of white as if for nature’s own wedding party, and sighed. Loseley was my childhood. The gilded glamour of London was both frightening and alluring in equal measure, and while I felt a shiver of excitement at the thought, it also filled me with fear, and the temptation, strange and contradictory though it might be, to stay here and remain a child forever.

Back in the house I called Prudence to help me with my packing. I had a fine new gown of leaf-green taffeta to wear in the city and a new kirtle the colour of burnished brass, both paid for by my grandmother. ‘Saved up by the offices of my good hens,’ she confided, and it was clear to me that this gave her extra delight.

In both manor house and hovel, money from egg laying belonged by tradition to the woman of the house.

‘Give thanks to my Buff Sussex bantams, the ones your grandfather said looked like drunken slatterns who would never lay an egg to save their lives.’ My grandmother’s stony face, which one of the dairymaids had whispered could turn the butter rancid, softened into a proud smile. ‘They have just started to lay again after their winter resting.’ She chucked my cheek. ‘My silly hens would be glad to have helped make you pretty. They knew there was no hope for me,’ she shrugged, laughing at the same time, ‘even if they laid for a lifetime.’

I held her to me at that, moved to my heart at her kindness. ‘Thank you, Grandmother. Not for this alone, but all you have done for me.’

I took one last look at the bedchamber I had shared with Bett since I was in short coats. I knew we two had been blessed. It is the custom for children, no matter how gently born, to be sent from an early age to be brought up in other people’s houses, so that they might learn the ways of their betters, and to further the advancement of their families. I was fortunate mine had waited so long to be paid back for their much-delayed investment in me.

I looked at the familiar bed with its green and blue hangings, the tapestry behind it of Ruth, standing exiled in her field of corn, and wondered if London would feel like the distant land Ruth had been sent to or a world of wonderful opportunity. I emptied the presses where I had kept my gowns and the coffers where my few jewels were stowed. The room had seemed mournful without Bett. Now Frances would sleep in it alone, giving it up to grander guests when any came to stay here.

‘See, Ann,’ Frances’ voice behind me made me turn, ‘I have made a parting gift for you to take to London.’

It was a package, all wrapped in silk with a ribbon I had seen in Frances’ hair.

I opened it to reveal a sampler, sewn with perfect delicate stitching, as neat and clear as if it had been illuminated by a monk in some long-gone abbey. I turned it over. The sign of good stitching is at the back. Mine looked always like a nest of vipers. Frances’ stitching was as perfect behind as in front.

‘Do you like the text?’ she asked me eagerly. ‘I found it in Grandmother’s book on needlework.’

I looked down at the sampler in my hand and read aloud:

I felt moved that she had taken so much trouble for me, and yet strangely shaken at the message she had chosen. It seemed to foretell of an adult world where virtue and the senses were forever pitched against each other in battle. A world I had not yet encountered. All of a sudden a frightening sensation flooded through my very soul. Was this a lesson I would one day need to learn?

‘Thank you, Frances. I will read your homily if ever my senses try to lead me astray.’

‘I am glad of it,’ replied my pious little sister. ‘I have heard that the Court is a very ungodly place.’

‘Then I will have to be doubly virtuous.’

And then my saintly sister took me by surprise.

‘I will miss you, Ann.’

I took her hand. Her face was so serious, her great dark eyes like those of a dog that watches, waiting for its master’s return. It would be lonely here for the last child, but then Frances was hardly a child at all, despite her tender years.

‘I know that great bed will seem empty at first. Bett and I were often glad of each other’s company on winter nights. Yet it is also a magical place, your own world, a castle, or a great ship, to take you off to wondrous places of your own imagining.’

‘I shall try to remember that on the darkest nights. Yet I am not one to yearn for ships and castles. I am happiest at home by the fireside. You are the fearless one, Ann. You can kill a rat or brave Father’s anger, and Grandmother’s sternness, as if they had no power over you as they do over the rest of us.’

‘More fool me, perhaps, for they do have power over me. I have no house or money of my own. But I do have strength of will.’ I held her to me for a moment. ‘Though I am not sure it is always such a blessing. Come, help me take down my basket and we will ask the usher of the bedchamber to carry down the trunks.’

My grandfather and grandmother, together with Prudence, all the gentlemen servants and grooms, had gathered in the Great Hall to bid me farewell. My father had already arrived on horseback to accompany me to his sister’s house in London.

‘Goodbye, Ann.’ My grandmother kissed me on my cheek. ‘Some words of advice. Be chaste, silent and obedient.’

My grandfather was waiting behind her. ‘Be the first at least,’ he said to me softly. ‘Asking you to be silent and obedient would be like asking the stars not to shine in the sky.’

‘Goodbye, Grandfather.’ I felt a sudden wrench of pain and fear along with my excitement. All my short life my grandparents had been my rock, now I would have to sail into the treacherous ocean of womanhood alone.

I FELT MORTIFIED
that I had never visited London before.