The Lady and the Poet (19 page)

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,’ murmured Margaret, meeting my eyes, trying to offer comfort, but at that moment I could not love and praise God.

Sir John wanted no great ceremony, no trumpets sounding dolefully nor preachers telling him that man was but here for a short time, and I was glad of it for I felt not acceptance but anger.

My father, newly arrived from London, knelt also in the chapel, hunched over as if he could hardly comprehend that such a thing could happen twice, both to his wife and to his daughter.

He stared at his hands as he knelt. Stooped, his stature was almost that of a child and I felt a sudden pang almost of maternal tenderness for him. His temper was often choleric, and he believed his authority over us should be absolute, but underneath all there was love for us in his heart.

‘Father, let me lead you out.’

He climbed stiffly to his feet. ‘I feel my years, Ann, like some ancient city that has been sacked and left with nothing.’

We walked slowly down the aisle to where Sir John and his mother and sisters still stood at the door.

‘Goodbye, John.’ My father held out his hand and Sir John took it, the picture of wordless grief, imbued with a sudden dignity he had possessed not until this moment.

I too held out my hand, but Sir John turned abruptly away and asked his mother if she needed his arm.

I stood, as shocked as if he had struck me across the cheek with his own palm.

Margaret came towards us, clucking like one of my grandmother’s broody hens. ‘We are leaving now and we will stop in Peckham to rest the night. My husband, Sir Thomas, has given orders for beds to be prepared.’

‘Come, Ann.’ Mary threaded her arm through mine. ‘Our lady aunt will be missing you at York House. She has come to rely on you, to provide her with diversions. Is it true she dressed you up as a serving maid and made you walk about the streets of London?’

I nodded, my eyes still fixed upon Sir John, my heart racing with fear. Had his slight been deliberate?

‘Mary,’ I interrupted her chatter, ‘why would Sir John not take my hand as he did Father’s?’

‘Come, Father.’ Mary ignored my question and fell behind to walk at my father’s side.

I saw him whisper something to her and made pretence of looking at some glass in the church window.

‘Sir John has been listening too much to his mother,’ Mary’s voice was so clear I could hear her even when she tried to lower it. ‘My lady Mills believes it was Ann’s fault. That God was punishing her for trying to counteract His will and took her sister from us.’

Mary’s words were like flax left too near a flame. They burned into me. If I had not brought in the cowman would my sister truly have survived or was this thought born just of ignorance and prejudice?

I hardly noticed the ride from Camois back to London. Even the bustle of London’s multitudes did not rouse me from my pain and questioning.

The Great Hall of York House was thronged with people on our
solemn return. After the still sadness of Sussex it was like opening the door of some teeming workshop, full of fevered activity and clanging sound. Black-garbed men ran hither and thither, some holding manuscripts, others papers for cases in the Star Chamber or court of Chancery. The palaces of Whitehall and Westminster, but a few moments upriver from here, were the beating heart of Queen Elizabeth’s government. Even if courtiers might speculate, in hushed low voices, over who would succeed when the ageing queen died, there was no let-up in Court business.

And now, according to my father, the rebellion in Ireland was brewing up dangerously so that soon some action must be taken about the rebels. I was fortunate indeed not to be waiting on the Queen since, so gossip had it, she was in such bad sorts over Ireland that she regularly boxed her ladies’ ears, made them stand waiting for hours on end and even broke the finger of one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber who did not remove her gloves quick enough for the Queen’s pleasure.

My aunt was amongst those waiting in the hall and came across to me with her open arms. ‘Ann, my love, my heart breaks for poor Bett, just launched on life’s journey. I have lost two husbands, but no loved one of Bett’s tender years. To die in childbed is the curse of our sex.’

At these words my grief, contained by an act of willpower deep within me, would be subdued no longer. ‘My lady aunt, I…’

Bett’s face swam in front of my tear-filled eyes, the same sweet face I had seen every morn on the pillow close to mine, who had been the calm to my storm, the balm to all my hurts, the sharer of all my secrets, happy or sad. And now she was gone forever, her smile never again to light up the dark corners of my life.

I sobbed so that no more words were possible. Instead I buried my face on the prickly gold thread of my aunt’s gown, heedless of whomever might see me, and my aunt held me fast.

‘Ann, Ann, you were the best and kindest to her. She must have thanked God for His bounty that, though she had no mother, she had a sister such as you.’

‘And yet I could not help her when she needed help the most.’

‘That is pride, Ann. Only God can decide such things and His ways, though hard for us to accept, are not for us to question.’

I wished that I could accept the will of God as easily as she did. Instead, in my restless mind, I questioned the ways of man, and the ignorance of midwives.

For I know not how long I clung to my aunt, she patting my hair the while, until, slowly as a tide receding, my grief subsided and I retreated from her.

She, meanwhile, wiped my face with her kerchief and straightened the hair beneath my coif.

‘Now, Ann,’ she smiled at me tenderly and gestured to one who was standing behind me, ‘here is someone who has been waiting to see you, and who hopes you will let him share your grief.’

I felt a quick start of alarm deep inside me, confused between dream and the solid world around me, and turned to find myself looking into the earnest blue eyes of Richard Manners.

‘Mistress Ann, I came as soon as I heard the terrible news about your sister.’ His voice was as sober as the tolling of a bell. ‘At least you can comfort yourself that she is in the loving care of our communal Father.’

‘Yes, Ann,’ seconded the clear, gentle voice of the Lord Keeper, ‘though I know in the heart of one’s grief that can seem like cold comfort.’

A few feet behind the Lord Keeper, trying to remain discreetly in the shadows, I glimpsed his secretary. There was no sign now of the flirtatious courtier; instead I saw a look of tender sympathy on his face.

I do not know what bad angel prompted me to turn towards him. ‘And you, Master Donne, as a poet you must think about such things. Do you think it is the act of a just and merciful God that my sister is taken from me at so tender an age, with her whole life ahead of her?’

He paused, knowing that every eye was upon him.

‘I can give no easy answer, mistress. My own three sisters and brother were also taken early from this earth and I, too, struggled to see the justice in their loss. The common answer is that pain and death are the price of our own free will as sons and daughters of Adam and Eve who ate of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden.’

‘I know the common answer, Master Donne.’ I heard the harshness
in my voice but I had hoped for something more enlightening from one such as him.

‘Now, Ann,’ my aunt interrupted. ‘You cannot invite a lesson in philosophy from Master Donne and reject it thus peremptorily.’

‘I am sorry, Master Donne. It is the pain that makes me sharp.’

He bowed; his eyes, though, were two black pools of sorrow. And in that instant I saw a sympathy and understanding of my plight I had not looked for in one of his reputation.

‘Come, John,’ my uncle took his arm, ‘we have work to do in Chancery today.’

I wondered, had we been alone, if he might have said more than the usual empty offerings. And then the shock of my own thoughts engulfed me. When my own sister lay cold in her grave how could I feel warmed and comforted by one whom all had warned me against?

‘Fine words from Master Donne,’ Richard Manners’s voice jolted me back to the present. ‘Yet I did hear, when the brother he talks of died in Newgate Prison for sheltering a priest, Master Donne was not slow to profit from his brother’s inheritance.’

‘I hope what you say is not true of any man,’ I answered with a firmness I did not feel. Master Manners’s accusation brought back the conversation between Master Donne and his mother which I sorely wished I had not heard. Had his mother, when she accused him of betrayal of his religion, meant also a betrayal of his brother for his own ends?

‘Come, Master Manners, you should not repeat such imputations when they may be naught but idle gossip.’ My aunt softened her words with a smile. ‘Now, tell us, how is your good father at home in Leicestershire? You left in such haste at his bidding when last we met.’

Master Manners laughed a gay laugh which, in the midst of our mournfulness, struck a strange note. He was a handsome man indeed when his looks were happy. ‘My father!’ He turned once again to me. ‘He is as changeable as a weathercock. You are fortunate indeed to have a father who knows his own mind.’

I thought of my father, who knew his mind all too well and would listen to the opinions of none other.

‘I will not talk of marriage at such a time as this,’ continued Master Manners with a tact I could only feel grateful for. ‘Suffice it to say that
it was my father, never myself, who scattered thorns upon the path of my ambitions towards you, Mistress More.’

I smiled at his extravagant words.

‘See, Mistress More,’ there was an ill-concealed delight in his tone, ‘I have made you smile. I am grateful at least for that small mercy.’

‘Now, Master Manners,’ my aunt shooed him away with her fan, ‘it is time that Ann and I fulfilled our household obligations.’

Master Manners bowed low and I saw him watch me until my aunt and I had left the Great Hall entirely.

‘I have to own,’ my aunt whispered as we made our way down to the kitchens, ‘I have a weakness for a handsome face, but I felt his boldness in talking thus of his intentions was too great in your present state of sadness.’ She stopped and took my hand, holding me at her arm’s length. ‘The flowers will be blooming in the gardens before too long. And so will you. You are welcome to spend as long here with us as ever you like, it is nothing but pleasure to the Lord Keeper and myself. Yet you should think about your future, sweet Ann, and the joys that lie ahead of you in marriage.’

‘And in childbed?’ My grief engulfed me again at the thought of that pale ghost, so recently laid into the ground. ‘Is that a joy to be devoutly wished?’

‘Ann, Ann, sorrow as long as you wish. But one day, and not too long hence, you will yearn for the pleasures of hearth and home.’ She looked at me slyly. ‘And of the bedchamber also.’

At that I flushed as red as the rose that would soon flourish in my uncle’s gardens. ‘Aunt,’ I took her arm and led her along the passageway, ‘I see I must keep you from the sight of too many handsome faces.’

‘Now, Ann! You were ever a naughty child! Come, now, and we will instruct the clerk of the kitchen. Later on you can come with me on a visit to my lady Warwick, who also waits upon the Queen.’

After we had done with the clerk and my aunt had no need of me for a while, I tried, in my chamber, to read the story of Abelard and Heloise which I had brought with me from my grandfather’s library. Yet this tale of doomed desire, where Heloise falls in love with her tutor, Peter Abelard, and gives herself to him, only to find that her brothers are so angry they forcibly remove his manhood, was hardly a distraction from my misery. ‘What you need, my Ann,’ I heard my
grandmother’s voice in my head, as she had told me so many times when I was a maid, ‘is to find work for those idle hands and food for that nimble brain of yours.’

I put Abelard away in my coffer. Perhaps I should go back to Loseley. For here I was too young and too unimportant to be of use to anyone.

I knew what the visit to my lady Warwick would be. Two hours in a draughty gallery listening to more gossip of Court life, yet I went and sat and listened to not one word.

I MOURNED MY
sister through the cold and fog of early springtime, the weather echoing my own loss and deadness of spirit. The sharp winds of March blew away some of my dark imaginings, yet it was not until the sun shone through with sudden brightness that I roused myself and sought diversion. It was too early to wish for courtly entertainment so I vowed at least to make myself useful and went to hunt for my aunt’s gentlewoman, Joan, to see if she had tasks that needed assistance.

Joan, round as a barrel, with apple cheeks to match, the picture of a countrywoman, yet she had never taken a step outside the smoke of London, accepted my offer with a smile. ‘Bored of your prayers, are you?’ And then she thought better, sensing I might take it amiss when my sister was so recently taken. ‘Sorry, mistress, I did not mean to lighten your loss. We were all saddened to hear of your sister. A lovely girl from what I hear.’

‘Trouble yourself not, Joan. You are right about the prayers. I find it hard to thank God when I feel so angry with Him.’

‘Mistress!’

‘Sssh! I should not say such things, I know. What can I aid you with?’

‘My mistress says she has a taste for Kentish apples, and I have heard, despite the season, there are some to be had in Borough Market, though why the mistress hath not them stored over winter at Pyrford, I know not.’

She looked at my rich dress. ‘Tis Southwark, mistress, and we will be down amongst the crowds of ordinary folk. Best wear a cloak to cover up your finery.’

This time we crossed by water, hailing a wherry from the York House steps with a cry of ‘Eastward Ho!’ And before long we found ourselves alighting in Southwark at Paris Garden Stairs. This bank of the Thames seemed busier, if that were possible, than the other. We walked along a great row of houses, past ponds and playhouses, water-mills and smoky workshops. Outside the bear pit we heard shouting from within, yet I hated the thought of the poor beast being hounded by dogs. A cruel pastime. I peeped into a pleasure garden before Joan pulled me onwards towards the market, beyond the Great Beer house and another set of steps down to the river, whose name made me smile: Pickle Herring Stairs. A painted young woman leaned out of a window above us, calling, ‘Morning, young mistresses, what brings you to this saucy part of town?’