The Lady and the Poet (11 page)

‘I will have to invite him to join me. And you? What are the interests that hold the fancy of Mistress Ann More? Not the hunting field, I hazard?’

‘I like to ride, but not to hunt. A hart is too beauteous to kill.’

‘You disappoint me. I had heard from your stepmother of your fierce ungovernable nature. Exterminating rats was listed as your favourite occupation.’

I could not help but laugh. ‘Oh, I only kill rats during the season, you understand. To do so otherwise would be most unsporting.’

‘I am sure the rats at Loseley would be pleased to hear it.’

‘I enjoy reading also.’

‘Cousin Constance complains of Latin and Greek. She says your grandfather has mistaken you for a boy.’

The tone in which he said these words implied that he did not share this illusion and I found myself blushing, a habit I detest.

‘My grandfather is a very learned man. He looked for a pupil. I was more apt than the others. Perhaps you share the common notion that learning in women should not be encouraged? It makes us as cunning as foxes, so he maintains.’

Master Manners fixed his clever blue eyes on my face. ‘I have great admiration for the fox.’

To my surprise I saw my cousin Francis stride across the lawn towards us. I had not seen him since I came to London as he had remained at my aunt’s house in Pyrford, some few miles from Loseley.

‘Francis!’ I greeted him. If I had been alone I would have run the few yards between us and flung myself on him. Francis was more to me than my brother, since we had grown up together while my own brother lived with my father and my stepmother. ‘What a pleasure! When came you to London? Have you met Master Manners?’

Francis bowed. He was only a year older than I but seemed suddenly the gentleman. ‘I arrived from Pyrford this morning. I came to say that your aunt, my mother, requests your help with some task indoors.’

Master Manners smiled and bowed. ‘Her gain will be my loss, Mistress More.’

‘That fellow has some address,’ Francis whispered as he threaded his arm through mine. ‘He sounds almost like a Frenchman.’

‘Aye. He has a silvery tongue, but at least he is not a dull dog like Bett’s husband.’

‘Oho. So the suitor your father has selected is not so far from your taste after all?’

‘I said not that, Francis. Simply that he has a fluency and a certain wit.’

‘But wit is the quality you prize above all, Ann. I have heard you say so often.’

‘As long as it is coupled with a good heart and an honourable soul.’

‘You ask not much, cousin,’ Francis teased me.

‘Why does my aunt want me?’

‘She felt you had spent long enough with the well-named Master Manners. He must not be allowed to tire of your company. And I think she feared if you were alone for too great a while, Mistress Ann More might…’ He paused, searching for words.

‘Say aught that requires a brain?’

‘Ann, Ann. Outspoken as ever.’

‘And what of your own courtship, Francis, with Mistress Mary Hawtrey, heiress to the manor of Chequers in Buckinghamshire?’ I teased.

Francis sighed. ‘Well enough for a match decided for us when we were in our cradles. Mary is an amiable young woman.’

‘Yet there is no love between you?’

‘What hath love to do with marriage? You are too sweet on such things, Ann. One would believe you had buried yourself in bowers of green with shepherds trilling on flutes and swains plighting love all day at Loseley. Marriage is a business arrangement, as you well know. Love can be found elsewhere.’

‘And what if I like it not to be a business arrangement?’

‘Very likely you will have to make the best of it, knowing the temperament of your good father.’

I shrugged, conceding that on this Francis and I would not agree. I changed the subject to avoid quarrelling. ‘Tell me about Master Donne, is he as great a libertine as people say?’

‘Master Donne? My stepfather’s secretary? He writes clever verses, full of wit and paradox that are passed round the Inns of Court. They talk of love and witty seductions and are much prized, or so I’m told.’

‘Francis,’ I said, as brisk as if I ordered a batch of loaves, ‘I would like you to bring me some.’

‘Ann!’ Francis looked as if I had announced I was a secret Papist and believed not in the Thirty Nine Articles. ‘They are not for pure young gentlewomen.’

‘Good.’ I bit my lip and looked down demurely.

‘Ann, I cannot.’

‘Francis, I have done many things for you. I have lied when you were out with your roistering friends, and assured my aunt you were at your studies. I have brought you water when your head was raging after too much sack. I have even translated some of your Latin syllogisms which, as far as you understood them, could have been written in Ancient Greek.’

‘I know it. But…’

‘Francis, I will tell no one. Why should women be ever excluded from the mind of men?’

‘If it were only the mind…’ He sighed. ‘I will do my best. If I can lay my hands on them.’ We had reached the great door of York House. ‘Ann, I hope you dip not your fingers in the fire.’

At that I looked as stern as Athena wielding the scales of justice. ‘I am playing no game at all. From what I hear, Master Donne is a promiscuous and ungodly man.’

‘Ever the sort ladies like, then.’

‘Francis, cousin, give us more credit. Now I must seek out your mother. She is determined, if I am not to be one of the Queen’s ladies, that I have more lessons in the honourable art of housewifery.’

Francis choked with merriment. ‘My mother was never at home for time enough to learn such arts herself. Nor wished to for that matter.’

‘Ah, but she has servants to initiate me. Today, I believe, it is the secrets of the still room.’

‘Rather you than I.’

‘Yes. And that is why I need some unladylike diversion. Or I shall drown myself in a vat of lye and never be seen again.’

Francis laughed. ‘If I had not known you all my life, and what a trial you can be, I would wed you myself.’

‘Yes,’ I pushed him off, laughing, ‘we are lucky our parents have not fixed it up already. Cousins are nothing to them. Though your betrothed, Mary, is richer than I.’

‘Your portion is respectable. Enough to tempt some men.’

‘Then I hope I do not meet them!’

‘And what do you think tempts Master Manners? Does he need a new roof on his manor and your dowry is the very thing to provide it? Or is it the desire to tame you?’

‘Francis,’ I teased him, ‘such a worldly head on such young shoulders.’

‘Love, then? The root of all evil?’

‘I thought that was money.’

‘Money cannot touch love for the harm it does. Why do poets lament its deadly arrows, else?’

‘Francis, go!’ I shook my head as I sent him off and went to look for my aunt.

I realized I knew not where in this great labyrinth of a house, the still room lay. I found it, after much searching and some help from the usher of the ewery.

My aunt was there already, wearing a plain gown, busy adding water to a glass container which bubbled on a flame. She looked up and I thought she would ask me what I made of my suitor. But my aunt knew me too well.

‘Ann, welcome. We have useful work to do. Yesterday my lord husband wrenched his shoulder as he climbed from his horse. He has called for a poultice of
flos unguentorum
, the flower of ointments. Now let me see where I put the receipt.’

My aunt hunted around until the receipt fell out of
Gerard’s Herbal
, newly published by the Queen’s printer and causing much sensation with all its wondrous illustrations of healing herbs from belladonna to black henbane and heartmint. I wandered round the still room, intrigued in spite of myself. We had such a room at Loseley, indeed my grandmother was famous for her herbal cures, yet it was nothing compared to here. This was a marvellous place, with benches along three sides on which were ranged bottles in every size from jeroboams to
tiny vials with stoppers, containing the most costly of the essences. Hanging above them, on wooden rails, were hundreds of different herbs, with still more preserved in bottles of distilled water.

The best thing about the room was the scent: faintly medicinal, yet overlaid with spice and the pungent whiff of herbs. Entering the room was at once comforting like unto breathing in the fumes of some healing posset.

Every lady who ran a large establishment, my grandmother had often told me, must know how to make the potions and medicines for her household. And for this I had to understand the basis of medical diagnosis, how God formed every one of us out of four humours—yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm—and when these humours became out of balance, then illness and pain surely followed.

‘Ah, here it is. Help me, Ann, if you please.’

I hastened to help, grateful she seemed to be overlooking my outburst over the Court, at least for the moment.

She read the receipt out aloud. ‘Flower of ointments: exceeding good against the pulling or swelling of the joints—just what we have need of—and to restore the balance of the humours. That will be excellent,’ she confided, ‘if it can remove a little of his black bile. The Lord Keeper is usually the calmest and fairest of men but this injury hath released all his bile and choler.’ She studied the receipt once more. ‘Now what need we? Rozin. Ann, you will find that on the shelves. Yellow wax, olibanum, turpentine, myrrh. The white wine we will have to find in the ewery. But what’s this?’ she tutted in impatience. ‘Half a pound of sheep’s suet? Ann, run along to the clerk of the kitchen and see if he has aught of that.’

But the clerk had none. No call for it in
his
cooking, he told me with much disdain, nasty peasant stuff.

‘Shame, shame,’ my aunt sighed, ‘I have no more liberty to go marketing today but I will take you to the Shambles tomorrow. Tonight we must prepare for a great banquet. Your father has some good news.’

I wondered what news my father might have that would warrant such a celebration. A hint of fear made my hands shake. Surely it could not be so soon to announce my betrothal?

My aunt stole a sudden look at me, but I continued modestly packing away the poultice we had started to prepare.

I ran to my bedchamber, my thoughts jumbling in my head. Master Manners had more address than I expected but I hardly knew what manner of man he was. Whether he was kind, or Godfearing, or of a generous and loving nature? I thought back to the betrothals of my sisters, trying to remember how much choice they were given in the matter. Margaret and Bett had accepted my father’s decision without demur. Only Mary had fought to be allowed her Nick. And Nick, I recognized with sadness, had turned out to be a disappointment in my father’s eyes at least.

As the light began to dim Joan arrived with my candle. Smiling to herself she pulled the great curtains.

‘Stay your hand awhile, Joan, I will draw them myself. I love to watch the sunset sink over the river.’

‘Which gown will you wear, Mistress Ann?’

I surveyed the dresses I had brought with me from Loseley—paid for generously by my grandmother’s hens. I had worn them but little since for my visit to Court my aunt had made me wear my hated white dress as punishment for my stubborn nature. I picked up my favourite, in sarcenet, the colour of old gold, and held it against myself in the glass. Outside the last rays of the sun glowed through the great windows lighting up my russet hair.

‘This one.’

I washed my hands and face in rose water and stood for Joan to dress me. ‘No coif, thank you, Joan. I will have my hair loose tonight.’ She arranged my burnished curls about my ears with the horn comb.

‘And what jewels would you like, Mistress Ann?’ She held out the small coffer in which I stored my few items of jewellery.

I held up two necklaces, a thick golden chain from which hung six or seven jewelled stars, and a simple square cross embellished with four large garnets.

I knew at once the cross became me better. ‘Joan, can you tie the clasp on this for me?’

Being several inches smaller than I, Joan had to reach on tiptoe, but still she was too low. So she knelt instead on the great bed and bade me lean against it.

‘There.’ She captured a stray curl and pushed it back behind my ear. ‘I have never seen you look so lovely, mistress.’

For answer, I laughed.

Looking back, I know not why. Did I feel some strange power surging through me that I had never felt before?

I waited in my chamber until I could hear from the loud sounds in the Great Hall below that all the company were assembled. And then I took myself slowly down the grand staircase, entering the hall from the back, beside the carved wooden screen behind which the ushers scurried back and forth to the kitchens.

Around thirty ladies and gentlemen were already seated at the long table, their cloths laid across their arms or shoulders to dry their hands when the usher of the ewery brought round washing bowls between courses. The ladies vied with each other in extravagances clad in their taffeta and silk, in jewelled colours of rose and ruby all embossed with gilded thread, which caught the flare of the candles in a scene of rare magnificence. At the far end, musicians played softly on lute and tabor as the ushers brought in dish after dish piled high with capons, peacock and leg of mutton boiled with lemons.

My father saw me first and rose to bow and let me pass, and next to him a smiling Master Manners.

‘Ann, you are late, you should have been led into dinner,’ complained my aunt. ‘Now you will have to seat yourself where you may.’

The diners began to shuffle to their feet, offering me their place. The offer I accepted, since it would cause least embarrassment, was from my cousin Francis. Sweeping up my gown over one arm I at last sat down with Francis’ betrothed, Mary, on my right.

Francis leaned across to his neighbour on the other side. ‘Master Donne, living at York House as you do, I assume you have already encountered my cousin, Mistress Ann More?’

Laughing eyes turned to mine and for the merest moment registered extreme shock.

Master Donne had recognized in the great lady before him the chamber maid he had tried to bed a few hours since.