“The King is ill,” Ursula whispered.
“One hears so; therefore, others think
for
him. But the King has come to hate me, since I would not sign his Devise for the succession.”
“Aye . . .” said Ursula on a long breath, “so Master Julian said—we saw him in London.” She stared appalled at Anthony. “They don’t accuse you of
treason,
surely.”
“Not quite—not yet.” Anthony slumped down in his carved chair. His face fell into heavy lines, he had grown thinner, and a muscle twitched beside his eye. The joyous noises from the fairground came through the open window. Anthony half turned his head. “Let them make merry while they can, poor wights,” he said. “Soon there may be nobody to give them festivals.”
Stephen inhaled a sharp breath, his hazel eyes softened as he put his hand on his patron’s crimson velvet shoulder.
“Courage, my friend,” he said. “Our Blessed Lady will protect you, for you’re in the right. You’ve stood up for both divine and earthly justice!”
“Ah . . . Stephen,” answered Anthony warmly, “
your
faith has been a comfort to me these last months!”
The two young men exchanged an affectionate look, and Ursula thought how much she had misjudged Brother Stephen in the past, thinking he might be lecherous, and harboring ridiculous fears for Celia, who was standing demurely by the door, not even looking towards the monk. I’m so often wrong, Ursula thought, should never have insisted on that Cumberland trip, it’s brought my Celia naught but trouble and dreadful memories. As for the future—we must trust in God, as does this good monk.
“May I come to confession tonight, Brother?” she asked. “I’m in sore need.”
“Surely there was a priest at Lanercost?” asked Anthony frowning.
“Aye, but I did not make good confessions, for I did not see my sins.”
“By the Mass . . .!” Anthony was momentarily diverted from his troubles, wondering what Lady Ursula could have on her conscience. Surely none of the mortal sins, but the girl
—Celia,
that was her name! A lovely little thing, tempting as a peach,
she
might have a thing or two to confess.
“How old are you now, Celia?” he asked.
“I was fifteen, sir, on St. Anthony’s Day. We were nigh Oxford then. There was a great thunderstorm, my mare cast a shoe, and a spider ran across my arm. It seemed ill-omened, alack!”
Anthony laughed. He now remembered her amusing pertness, and the dimple near her lips when she smiled. “Certes, that was no proper celebration,” he said. “We must make up for it.” He thought of the jolly little dance he might have given for her, invite the local gentry, find her a husband as he remembered he had once promised to do, and his face sobered. The local gentry would not come to Cowdray at present. They were afraid. Moreover, there was Jane’s state.
He turned to Ursula. “I’m very glad you’re come, Lady Ursula, for I know that you’ll help my wife; she’s with child, and most unwell. Worse than last time. She weeps incessantly, and the least noise disturbs her. Molly o’ Whipple is here, but her simples do no good. Still,” he added, ever striving for optimism, “the babe kicks and squirms lively i’ the womb. Ye can feel it, and my poor Lady Jane is a delicate breeder.”
“To be sure I’ll help!” cried Ursula, immensely relieved to be needed. “And Celia—I’ll find ways to make her useful.”
Anthony nodded. He glanced down at the threatening official letter on his writing table. It must be answered somehow—firmly, diplomatically, and soon. The royal messenger was waiting. He turned to Stephen. “We’ll make copies, when we’ve thought it out. One to Cecil, of course, and that Cranmer, d’ye think?” Anthony’s lip curled. “My Lord Archbishop Cranmer, who was a good Catholic once—yet like the windflower, nay rather like an empty puffball, he spurts in every breeze. I remember how my father despised him and his connivances to please King Harry—Queen Catherine’s divorce, then repudiating His Holiness the Pope—and now
perjury.
Signing Edward’s Devise is hideous perjury, since Cranmer signed the old King’s will which fixed the succession. Bah!” Anthony banged his fist on the table. “What’s to be expected from a
married
priest!”
“Very little, sir,” said Stephen calmly. “Nothing at all in matters of conscience. He is, to be sure,
not
married in God’s eyes, and thus a fornicator.”
They had forgotten the two women, who stood together rather awkwardly awaiting dismissal. Fornicator, Celia thought, what an ugly word. And with what chill contempt Brother Stephen speaks it. She looked at the young man’s mouth—full, red, flexible—impossible to believe that she had kissed it, or that for a second he had certainly responded.
“Shall I go to Lady Jane?” asked Ursula tentatively.
“Aye, pray do.” Anthony gave her his warm smile. “And Celia’ll companion Mabel, who pouts and sulks and wanders about like a lost pup. She should be wed, of course, and I’m sorry I can’t arrange it,
now!
”
Stephen turned and stared full at Celia. His tone was judicial, a little frightening, as it had been when she first came to him for lessons atop St. Ann’s Hill. “No doubt Celia may raise Mistress Mabel’s spirits,” he said, “but I deem she can make herself more useful in other ways, too.”
“
How?
” said Celia involuntarily, while both Anthony and Ursula looked surprised.
“She may repair the altarcloths, which are in sad condition, also two of the chasubles—I’ve asked Mistress Mabel, but to no avail.”
“Excellent idea, excellent!” cried Anthony heartily, still startled by the young monk’s tone which was like that of a reproving elder, and he saw a new look in the girl’s beautiful eyes—was it resentment?
At this moment when Ursula had totally relinquished the notion that there had ever been anything between Stephen and Celia, the idea first occurred to Anthony, but he was far too harassed for speculation.
“I’m not very skilled wi’ the needle,” Celia said slowly, on a faint tone of mutiny. She stared down at the rushes, her cheeks grew pinker.
“I’ll help you, sweeting!” cried Ursula.
Stephen nodded in her direction with a slight smile. “Also,” he went on, “I think it expedient for Celia to return daily to the Spread Eagle. The Potts can find her some small tasks; they brought her up, and will, I’m sure, be glad to have her back.”
“
Indeed!
” the girl cried, as both Ursula and Anthony stared at the monk’s imperturbable face. “Holy St. Mary,” Celia went on, barely controlling the tremble of anger, “ye wish me to become serving wench in a tavern once more? Have
you
perchance been appointed to direct my future?”
Anthony chuckled, for Celia looked rather like an outraged golden kitten, but he was puzzled, and silenced Ursula’s protest with a motion of his hand.
“Come now, Brother Stephen—Poor we may be compared to the past, yet not so straitened that Lady Southwell’s niece must go back into service. I find your proposition as odd as they obviously do.” Anthony waited. He had grown very fond of his house priest during the last months when he had been exiled from other confidants, nor felt that he had quite atoned for the monk’s imprisonment during the King’s visit, and its consequences,—which had nearly killed Stephen.
“Celia . . .” said Stephen, still speaking as though she weren’t there, “has quick intelligence, she may have
learned
some discretion. She can keep her ears open at the Spread Eagle where come many strangers who’d never dream of her connection with Cowdray. Isolated as we have become here . . .” He stopped, raising his heavy black brows quizzically.
“Oh-h-h . . .” cried the girl, understanding faster than the others did, “you want me to be a kind of spy? I might hear news of danger—to us?”
Stephen smiled. “The London carters, the sheep traders, sailors trudging from the capital to board their ships on the coast—they all blab of much
we
never hear.”
Anthony nodded slowly as he saw the possibilities in the monk’s idea. Except for royal messengers—like the one waiting in the buttery, where the steward would see that he neither talked to the servants nor heard aught as to Stephen’s presence and celebrations of the Mass—Anthony had no access to news. He was under what amounted to informal house arrest. His most trusted servant, Wat Farrier, was lodged in a dingy dockside inn near the royal palace in Greenwich. Wat had his instructions for the moment when and if he heard that the King had died. Then he would hasten back to Cowdray if he could—a risky, uncertain arrangement.
“Will you try Brother Stephen’s plan, Celia?” Anthony said.
“Need ye ask,” cried the girl, her eyes sparkling. “I’d do anything for you and Cowdray, and ’tis like a sort of hoodman’s blind—a Christmas game!”
“I wish it were,” said Anthony. He picked up his goose-quill pen for the starting of a draft.
Thus passed the next three weeks at Cowdray, while they all, even Mabel, lived in mounting tension and uncertainty. Celia walked daily into Midhurst, where the Potts received her temperately, after some hesitation. She served ale, washed mugs during the dinner hour as she had used to; she parried amorous advances in the broadest Sussex accent—and she listened. Each dusk she returned to Cowdray and reported privately to Sir Anthony (she saw nothing of Stephen except in the chapel), sorry that there was so little to tell. There were rumors a-plenty . . . the King was better, the King was worse. The Princess Mary had seen her brother; no, she had been denied his presence. The Duke was massing forces on Blackheath, or instead, he had taken the bridal pair, his son Lord Guilford and Lady Jane Dudley, on a pleasure jaunt to Richmond. Two parsons had been hanged at Tyburn—no, burned at Smithfield—for singing Mass in the old way, and genuflecting idolatrously despite warnings. All church bell ringing of any kind was now forbidden in London. Good money grew scarcer, a groat’s worth of meal now cost sixpence. The shillings grew so red with copper, ’twas said they blushed for shame. All the ports were more closely guarded each day.
Celia garnered these tidbits, amongst much local gossip as to the rising prices of mutton and grain; the probable harvest; the scandalous behavior of the chandler’s daughter who had set up as a whore not three doors away in the ancient building which had once belonged to the Knight’s Hospitallers.
Anthony listened patiently, he thanked Celia, but they both knew that her information was worthless.
On St. John’s eve Cowdray closed the fair with the traditional bonfire. For days the servants had been laying it, chopping down oaks, amassing deadwood, collecting the pitch in great vats. When it was lit, Anthony led his family out to the mound where the Bohuns and then the Brownes had always built the bonfire. The flames were beginning to leap and crackle, reddening the twilight. The merrymakers deserted the fair to watch. A roar of triumph burst from them when the wood caught.
Soon, the villagers began to dance around the fire, a wild orgiastic dance, as they shouted and leaped.
Anthony, Ursula, Celia and Mabel stood a little apart from the frenzy while the flames flared up tall as a steeple.
“’Tis the finest bonfire we’ve ever had,” said Anthony, laughing grimly. And no doubt the last, he thought. He drew himself up as two horsemen suddenly came trotting across the meadow from the highway, and dismounted. One was the squire of Stedham, a village two miles away, and the other John Hoby, the King’s steward at Petworth. Both were vociferous Protestants, and both, he knew, were enemies.
“Good evening,” said Anthony coolly. “You’ve come to watch our bonfire?”
“Aye,” said Hoby, a great tub of a man with gimlet eyes between folds of puffy flesh. “Ye can see it for miles. Squire here and me were riding back to Petworth on a matter of business, an’ we thought we’d look in.”
“Right welcome,” said Anthony, his muscles tensing—Petworth having been wrested from the Percys was now crown land, technically, but Northumberland had somehow acquired the castle. It was known that he kept there a great number of retainers and armed men. As for the Stedham squire, he was a meager little toady who had once been glad enough to sit below the salt at Anthony’s dinners, and even a year back begged Anthony for a loan— never repaid.
“Ye celebrate the vigil of St. John?” asked Hoby in a jolly offhand voice, doffing his plumed hat and then clapping it on again.
Anthony hesitated, but he finally answered with sarcastic caution. “How can you think so, Master Hoby, since saints are forbidden in England. The bonfire is for Midsummer Eve. That’s not prohibited yet, I believe?”
Hoby grunted uncertainly. “Ye jest, Sir Anthony?” He stared around. All these yokels and servants, they were enjoying Sir Anthony’s bounty, they were attached to Cowdray and would—most of them—be loyal, but not over a hundred fighting men in the lot. The rest were women, youngsters and old gaffers. And of the family from the Great House, only three women apparently, which tallied with his information. The oldest one, in the widow’s coif, might be Lady Southwell, though he had heard she was up north with the Dacres of Gilsland. Mistress Mabel, the plump young partridge with a stupid look, was Sir Anthony’s sister. The other maiden, slender, modestly dressed in green, golden hair tumbling down her shoulders, he did not know, nor did she signify. The King’s messenger while stopping at Petworth on his way back to Greenwich, had said that there were no men in Sir Anthony’s family. Obviously true.
Hoby considered his instructions, which were to watch and wait until he received word to strike. His was to be the honor of arresting Sir Anthony for treason, though, he thought pleasurably, clear evidence of papistry might hurry the matter, and would greatly add to his acclaim.
In this desire John Hoby was not entirely swayed by ambition. He had strong religious convictions. He had been moved by the thundrous preachings of Ridley and Latimer, and three years ago he had been totally converted by John Foxe. There was no doubt of the true interpretation of God’s Word as shown in the Bible, which Hoby read nightly. Roman fripperies disgusted him—heathen bowings and scrapings, incense and Latin mumblings, the hypocritical witchcraft which professed to believe that a scrap of ordinary bread dipped in the cowslip wine any goodwife had made could be turned by incantations into actual pieces of the Lord Jesus Christ’s body—this seemed to him obscene.