The Lady and the Poet (4 page)

‘Ssssh, Mary! Sir John is standing by.’ I saw my sister’s new husband approach us with a gleam in his eye that was not entirely brotherly. ‘God’s blood, I wish I did not have to choose between you, but could take you all to my bed.’

‘Except that I have a husband already,’ Mary’s wicked eyes sparkled, ‘and my sister Margaret could not be parted from her marchpane cake, and Ann here thinks men are poor creatures only interested in their horses and their hounds, do you not, Ann?’

‘How proud must you be, Sir John,’ I steered the subject away from such dangerous waters, ‘that this day is finally come.’

‘Certain, I am proud,’ he quaffed another tankard of mead, ‘for it is a special day indeed. This very morning out hunting I brought down
two white harts on the hunting field. You don’t see that every day of the week.’

I had to stifle my laughter and avoid the merry looks from my sister Mary.

What an oaf the man is.

Two of his retinue came lumbering up from one of the other tents. ‘Sir John,’ slurred the first in drunken tones, ‘I’ve just heard an apt saying for you: “A wife, a spaniel, a walnut tree; the more you beat them, the better they be.”’

They all laughed with great gusto. The next fool decided to embroider the theme. ‘As my father was wont to tell my mother, “Women and horses must be well governed.”’

‘Apt indeed,’ I replied, my voice all maidenly sweetness. ‘And our grandmother has a saying also. “The happiest day of a woman’s life is when she becomes a wife—and the second happiest is when she is made a widow!”’

At this the gentlemen staggered off to find more ale and sweeter company.

‘Tsk, tsk, Ann,’ Mary chided, taking my arm, ‘you will never find a husband that way.’

The night was drawing on into the early hours. Torches flickered in their sconces and the candles were burning low. The grooms of the Great Chamber tried to hide their yawns. Even my grandfather’s dogs were creeping to the fireside. The musicians, knowing their vail would be the greater if they kept the festivities going as long as possible, struck up another air.

Everyone knew that the time of the bedding was getting closer. Sir John summoned the cupbearer for a final filling of his tankard with mead. ‘Come, wife,’ he grabbed Bett by her wrist, half rough, half playful, ‘time for you and I to climb the stairs together now that we are well and truly wed.’

At this news there was a great crash on the drums and all in the hall and outlying tents started to follow the blushing Bett and her husband through the Withdrawing Room, up the stairs and along the passage thence right up to the door of their bedchamber.

Mary, Margaret and I then shut the guests and bridegroom out, Frances for once losing her holy looks when told she was too young for
such practices, and helped our sister undress. We arrayed her in her new nightgown, with its collar of fine cobweb lace, and laid her gently on the bed.

‘Ann! Mary!’ she suddenly beseeched us. ‘Don’t leave me here!’

Mary soothed her, sitting down next to her on the great bed. ‘Don’t fret. With luck he’ll have had too much mead to do his work.’

‘Let’s hope she’s had enough herself not to notice,’ added Margaret.

Mary began to giggle as, behind her, an apparition appeared. It was Sir John, dressed in his nightshirt, led by his two friends, while his family stood at the door cheering him on as if he were a nag running in some horse race.

I bit my lip. Under the fine lawn of his shirt his member stood stiffly to attention.

‘Oh dear,’ Margaret whispered, ‘the mead has fired him up instead of damping him down.’

At that my grandmother arrived, carrying two pewter mugs. ‘Make way for the bridegroom’s caudle! A little wine mixed with milk and cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg to keep your strength up!’ She noticed the state of Sir John’s member under its white linen nightshirt and shouted with laughter. ‘Not that by the looks of things you need it! Let us leave the happy couple to their sport!’

I tried to catch Bett’s eye to offer my sympathy that she should be subjected to so undignified a charade. Practices as bawdy as this, after all, had been abandoned by the more elevated of the gentry. I could hardly see London lords and ladies subjecting themselves to mummers’ rites. Yet my grandfather liked to respect old ways and country habits and, marvellous to account, my sister seemed quite happy with all the antics and even smiled when the stocking was thrown to mark the wedding night.

At the door of the chamber, beaming like a Cornish pixie, and not much taller either, stood my father.

‘Come, everyone. There are more victuals to enjoy downstairs. We need not stay here waiting to inspect the sheets as they did in my grandfather’s day. May God grant their union prosper.’ He turned to me as we all began to troop downstairs towards the hall and its great warming fire. ‘You next, Ann, or as you see, your sister Frances will overtake you in the marriage stakes.’

‘Frances is but ten years old, Father,’ I reminded him.

‘All the better. Old enough to be betrothed and young enough not to cavil at my choice.’ He looked at me levelly. ‘Unlike some young women.’

‘Yes, Ann,’ murmured Mary archly, ‘you wouldn’t wish to find yourself an old maid, would you?’

‘If otherwise I must have such a husband as yours, who buries you in worry and debt, then I would rather stay unwed!’ the Devil prompted me to reply. Yet I resisted as I knew Mary fretted about her husband’s extravagant ways. ‘Of course I want a husband. I am not so strange and freakish as to turn entirely from the joys of hearth and home. But can I have no say in what manner of man he is? Must he be chosen simply for the advancement of the More family?’

That night as I knelt, alone, to say my prayers, I tried not to let my mind roam to what was unfolding in Bett’s bridal chamber.

‘O Lord, dear Lord and Saviour,’ I whispered into the empty darkness, ‘if I must have a husband let him neither dolt nor debtor be, nor dullard either. For it seems to me, Lord, that these are the fates of my dear sisters.’

THE NEXT DAY
dawned warm and glorious and yet the thought of Bett’s departure dulled the golden light of morning more than the blackest of clouds. No longer would I wake each day with my beloved sister.

From this day on I would have to share a bed with Frances, who could not stay still one moment, except when she knelt in prayer for longer than a martyred saint. Even now with the sun hardly up she had risen from our bed and stood gazing at a picture I had always hated. It was the painted figure of a woman holding a finger to her lips, denoting modesty and silence, a set of keys at her waist to signify household efficiency, standing of all things on a tethered tortoise, which—my grandmother once explained to me—meant that, like the tortoise, she would never roam. This was the supposed portrait of an ideal wife.

‘I long to be married,’ sighed Frances. ‘To have a husband and a household of my own to look after. Do not you, Ann?’

I had lain in bed last night thinking of these things also. And had concluded that the husband for me was one who allowed me a soul to feel and a brain to think with. And sometimes I wondered where on this earth I might ever find him.

I admired my sister Mary for her easy acceptance of the married state, even though she is married to a spendthrift. She has such natural ease, a way of handling all things—household, husband, dogs, servants, that I could not but envy. All do exactly as she bids them. She
even seems to relish the ambition and scheming of the Throckmortons and is dazzled by their nearness to Court life.

And Margaret is simply Margaret, not so very much older than I in years but like a settled goodwife, relishing the rocklike safety her Thomas affords her and the peace of living in Peckham, near enough to London but also far enough away, unshakeable in her contentment.

‘It would serve you right,’ Frances intoned, her piety slipping to reveal a fissure of malice beneath, ‘if Father found you a husband who demanded obedience and shamefast modesty in his lady.’

‘And it would serve
you
right if Father decided he and Constance needed someone to look after them in their ageing years, and that you, the youngest daughter, should forgo the joys of marriage and family and be the one to do it.’

Frances looked so stricken I had to take pity on her. ‘You do not truly think they would do so?’

‘No. Father is too ambitious. He wants good marriages for all of us because his own standing requires it. If we marry not at all or—worse—marry badly then in the world’s eyes all the family is diminished, or so he says. That is why he is so angry with Mary’s husband. With his connections he should have got far. But Nick prefers his own amusement to advancing the family interests.’

Frances studied me, as if she possessed some valuable piece of information still denied to me, like the cat that had got to the cream first.

‘What, Frances? Spit it out or I will pull your cap off and throw it from the window.’

Frances’ hand went to her head as if to hold her cap in place. ‘I heard Father talking to some old man the other day about his son’s prospects. They mentioned your name also.’

All of a sudden my heart beat fast, and my mouth was dry with fear.

‘Frances! I am sure eavesdropping like some servant at the keyhole is not God’s work. I am surprised at you.’

Frances looked mutinous. ‘God’s ways are many and various. I thought you would want to know of any marriage negotiations.’

In spite of myself I asked, ‘And what was this old man’s name?’

She looked at me with her disconcerting pale blue eyes. ‘I think my father called him Manners.’

I knew I had to run, to get outside, away from this house which my grandfather had built and which represented, stone by stone, the honour and status of my family.

‘Bett is leaving at midday,’ she called to my retreating back. ‘I heard her tell my grandmother so last night. You’d better be back for that.’

‘I will.’

I ran down the back stairs, not towards the open parkland at the front of the house where the revellers from last night might still be sleeping, but towards the moat where the carp swam sleepily amongst the tall reeds. I climbed onto the high wall which separated the kitchen garden from the moat and walked dizzily along it. Everywhere around me nature was breaking forth into leaf and bud and for some strange reason it made me want to weep. I too was tender and green, waiting for the sun to warm me into womanhood, eager and hopeful. Yet I was blessed—or cursed—because though I had passed but fourteen summers, I knew what I did not want.

And yet all around me told me I had no power, that I had to simply obey and bend my will to my father’s as a dutiful daughter must.

As if in endorsement of this I hear my sister Frances’ voice, not pious now, but excited and jealous. ‘Ann! Ann!’ she calls. ‘Bett is leaving! And you are to go to London! To be trained for the Court! Our lady aunt has invited you to live with her and Father has accepted!’

I jumped down from the wall. London and the Court felt like a glittering reprieve from marrying someone I knew not. If I was to go to London the marriage negotiations between my father and this Master Manners’s father must have come to naught. Perhaps he wanted a dowry bigger than my father was ready to provide. I knew from the haranguing over my sisters’ portions and jointures that marriage negotiations could take longer than fitting out a ship to sail to the Indies and were just as risky. They were often long and bitter and broke down in acrimony, even after months of discussion. With luck, the same had happened here.

Breathlessly I returned with Frances to the house, which was crowded with servants, departing guests and their grooms as well as my sister Bett, her new husband and all his family, who were preparing to journey to his manor at Camois Court.

The sadness at losing her overcame my excitement at going to London.

‘Bett, beloved Bett,’ I wrapped her in my strongest embrace, ‘I can hardly bear to say goodbye.’

‘Dearest Ann. It is not as if I leave for a new-found land. I go to Sussex not America! I will write to you weekly. You have my word on it.’

‘Time will pass in a trice,’ interrupts my grandmother. ‘In the wink of an eye Bett will be calling upon you to her childbed, to hold pillows to her head and soothe her brow with chamomile.’

Bett blushed prettily.

‘Indeed I am sure she has already made a start!’ My grandmother pinched Bett’s cheek. ‘A fine son to inherit from Sir John.’

Always sons.

Six queens had been married to King Henry and only one son born between them, and he had lived but a few years while our Queen Elizabeth, a mere woman, had reigned over us for forty and brought both peace and stability. And now it started over again, since she had no male heir and everywhere, though it was treason to do so, her people whispered about who would take the crown when she died.

‘Farewell, my Ann.’ Bett held me fast. ‘You will soon forget me in the lures of London. I will be but a country mouse of no interest to a fine Court lady such as you will be.’

I watched outside the great front door, the More coat of arms emblazoned in stone above it to announce our family’s stature, until Bett’s coach was out of sight. Then I went to look for my grandfather, for it was he, rather than my father, who had studied me closest and most nearly understood my heart.