The Lady and the Poet (9 page)

‘Yet I do not have to serve the sun like some high priestess, making a pretence that she is young and beautiful, ever ready to do her bidding whether it is fair or not…’ I was remembering that vision, crazed and half-naked, attacking Lady Mary.

At that my aunt struck me hard across the face.

I gasped at the pain. Never in my whole life had I been struck, even by my father in the most frenzied of his cholers.

‘You put yourself too high. This is not a simple choice for you alone. I have talked to the Queen and, although she values loyalty above all and likes to keep those who are familiar about her, she is ready to entertain the idea of you in my place as I decline in years. Be mindful of what an honour that is to our family.’

‘I could not, Aunt! I would be like a poor common thrush in a golden cage, beating its wings against the bars when all around called for a canary.’

‘You are too fanciful, Ann.’ My aunt’s voice was as cold as the glint of metal when the sword flashes out of its scabbard, and just as threatening.

‘But, Aunt, pray…’ I tried to argue.

‘This is no small matter, niece. The Queen expects you. Our family’s name is at stake, and your father’s future too. The Queen is not someone to be gainsaid because you are young and innocent. If you like not the brittleness of Court life, then learn to dissemble!’

‘Aunt, it is not in my nature.’ Some good angel prompted me to add the one thing that might convince her: ‘I will speak out of turn or do the wrong thing and bring shame on the good name of the Mores!’

‘It may not be as simple as that. Subjects do not turn down favours from the monarch. This offence is a serious one.’ She held me with steady, disapproving eyes, as a hawk surveys a small animal. ‘If you are not to be a gentlewoman to the Queen, then there is no other thought but marriage. It is time you learned humility. I will go to Court alone and you will start to learn the skills of running a great house, since marriage is certain to be your lot. Joan, my gentlewoman, will be your mistress and you will do exactly as she says.’

‘I am sorry, Aunt, to so displease you.’

‘This is no trivial matter, Ann. I fear your grandfather has too much indulged you. He was hard on his own children, your father
and my sister and I; if we dared to gainsay him he would have had us whipped, yet in his dotage it seems his brains have sunk to his boots.’

She noticed the locket with the picture of my mother I was turning in my hands and flung it to the floor. ‘Do you think
she
would be proud of you?’

Loneliness swept over me, and I missed my life at Loseley so much I almost wept.

I slipped to my knees when my aunt had left the room and picked up my treasured trinket. ‘O Lord of Righteousness,’ I beseeched, ‘all-seeing God, assure me that in this I do your will, and act not out of pride and selfish arrogance, but true proper humility.’

I heard the door open and looked up, expecting Joan. But it was my sister Mary, so I rose to my feet in love and gratitude.

But Mary had not come to salve my loneliness.

Her face was almost as angry as my aunt’s and her voice crackled with harsh annoyance.

‘So, Ann, what is this nonsense I hear that you find the Court unpalatable to your saintly tastes? My brother-in-law Throckmorton sold lands to win his sister a place there, yet our aunt tells me you have the chance and hand it back like a hot pan that burns your delicate fingers.’

‘I am sorry but I cannot…’

‘Cannot!
Cannot get a place that will help your whole family! You know how badly my husband and I need money and advancement, how close we are to the brink of disaster, and yet you act thus selfishly!’

‘I am sorry, Mary. Perhaps I may help in other ways.’

‘I greatly doubt it. Since my sister-in-law Bess is disgraced for marrying Sir Walter Ralegh, we had high hopes of you.’

‘Cannot you see, Mary, why I might not want a life where disgrace or advancement depend upon the Queen’s whim? When all around her wait for her to die while pretending she is the sun shining in the firmament? How, as they bow or curtsey, already they are calculating who will be the next in line to replace her?’

‘Sssh, Ann, you must not talk so.’ Mary looked behind her as if some spy might be lurking behind the tapestry.

I smiled. ‘You see, Mary, how indiscreet I am, how ill-suited to Court life where clearly discretion is all?’

Mary shook her head, suddenly relenting and holding her arms open to me. ‘What want you, then, you wild and silly girl?’

‘Oh, Mary,’ she was the eldest of us all, and had the mothering of us thrust upon her when she was but a child herself, after my mother died, ‘I truly know not.’

‘They will find you a husband, then.’

I stared out at the glittering river. ‘Frances says they have already started. What do you know of a Master Manners?’

‘Richard Manners? Handsome and amiable, with a reasonable income. You could do worse than he, Ann.’

‘He is the protégé of our dear stepmother.’

‘Ah. We should wonder what lies beneath the surface of the suggestion, then. Constance bears no tender love and maternal affection for us More girls. I will see what I can discover. By the way, good luck with the housewifery. I hear my lady aunt is to punish you by setting you to work with the servants.’

I had wondered what my punishment would be for my arrant disobedience. ‘I thank you, Mary, not to look so pleased at the prospect. It is better than spending another day at Court.’

‘Ann More,’ her voice held a grudging tenderness as if I were a child who had stolen a sweetmeat and curtsied when caught, ‘you are the most unnatural girl.’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, the loneliness descending again like a black crow, ‘that is a fact on which all are agreed.’

‘COME, JOAN!’ MY
aunt commanded her tire-woman, her anger against me still blowing as strong as ever. It had been almost a week now since I had spoken out and there had been no sign of my aunt relenting. ‘Dress Mistress Ann in plain clothing. Today she will assist you and Mercy at your tasks.’

‘You’ll need to take off your fancy partlet, mistress.’ I could see Joan thought me one step away from Bedlam to turn down a place at Court in exchange for washing dirty linen. ‘And those fine embroidered sleeves as well!’ She began to unlace me and replace my green silk gown with another in plain brown, the colour of slurry, made of hard, stiff worsted that rubbed instead of comforting. My fine stockings were thrown onto the bed in favour of itchy woollen ones, and my dear pointed shoes of green velvet with black frogging replaced by galoshes that seemed to be fashioned from sweaty and discarded saddles.

It seemed to me that Joan took rather too much delight in my transformation from fine lady to skivvy. When she was satisfied with my new clothing she raised a saucy eyebrow. ‘And what should I do with her hair, my lady? A maidservant would never have hair like Mistress Ann’s.’

Unlike most ladies of fashion I liked to wear my hair loose. Not long and flowing like the scandalous Lady Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, but curling below my ears, that I might feel the wind in it when I ran or rode. I hated the coifs and French headdresses so many ladies
wore so that they could not feel if it were calm or windy when they went abroad.

It gave Joan especial joy to scrape my hair back so that it was invisible, a hidden treasure beneath this drab cap so that now I looked like any workaday serving girl. Even my own grandmother, I swear, would not have known me.

‘Come, mistress,’ Joan chided. ‘We must do your aunt’s bidding and see how life as a laundry maid suits those tender hands of yours.’

I knew from watching my grandmother that even gentlewomen were not spared from the most menial tasks. Idleness and luxury were sins not to be indulged in, and women’s household labour was seen as God’s holy work. Yet even finding my way round the dark passageways used by the servants of York House was a daunting challenge. It was so great a place, far greater than my familiar home of Loseley, with countless chambers and more than a hundred servants, all dedicated to the smooth running of one household, be it a very great one.

‘Now you are one of us you’d best stay on the right side of the steward, mistress,’ warned Joan, laughing at me, ‘or he will fine you two pence for being late for dinner and the same for prayers.’ I wondered how much servants would be paid. Not enough for fines like those, I was sure. ‘And if you leave a door open, woe betide and a threepenny fine for you into the bargain. All runs on oiled wheels in this household.’

I was surprised, also, to learn that apart from Joan and Mercy almost all the servants were men, since at Loseley my grandmother liked to have women about her.

‘Women servants are not thought much of in London,’ Joan shrugged. ‘Men can make their fortunes if they choose to serve the right lord, though they end in poverty as often. “Young servingmen, old beggars,” so the saying goes.’

I saw, with a little unease, that I had never thought of the lives of those who waited on us before. They had been like part of the wainscoting on the walls, no more than the background to my comfortable home.

I had no further time to ponder on the condition of servants’ lives since Joan bid me accompany her to distant Moor’s Fields where the laundrywomen of London laid out their washing and we had to collect
our great tablecloths. I wondered that the servants did not wash them here, as they did at Loseley.

‘The Lord Keeper does not like to show his doings to the world,’ Joan informed me grandly. ‘If tablecloths were laid all across the bushes here, he says, it would seem as if we were running a wash-house!’

To my surprise, despite the streets being as thick with crowds as a dog’s back with fleas, I greatly enjoyed myself.

Walking out dressed as a serving maid was a world away from trying to push your way through on a fine horse, being stared at and importuned by all and sundry. On foot I had time to take it all in without being the target—the costermongers calling, the water vendors, like snails, with their great bottles on their backs, the old dames selling hot codlings, and all manner of tradesmen shouting their wares, from ropes to mend your bed to new chairs for old.

Now that I was down among them, the sounds and the smells of the city seemed not threatening but exciting and exotic. London was said to be the noisiest city in the world, with the clatter of carts, the cries of the street sellers and the incessant sound of bells. We had a German guest at my uncle’s table who said he had never heard so many bells as were rung in London. The apprentices sometimes ran across the town to ring them for their sport, my father said, and had bets to see who could toll the longest.

Just by the end of the Strand, hard by the maypole that stood there, we saw a milkmaid in the shade of the trees, crying, ‘Milk, pretty maids!’

For a moment I envied the girl her freedom, not having to lead her life for the sake of her family’s honour but having some say in her own choices. Yet perhaps I was being too innocent. Putting bread on the table governed the choices of most, not freedom. She was a tall young woman who smiled much, with a more joyous countenance than I had seen on any other woman about the streets.

‘Aye,’ Joan seemed to be following my thought. ‘Milkmaids come and go from their villages without the say-so of a husband. Not a bad life for a woman! Gossip has it, through luck or witchery they even escape the smallpox. And the Queen herself wasn’t safe from that. Instead one of her ladies, who nursed her through the worst, caught it
from her, and ended up as pitted as a pumice-stone! My poor Lady Sidney, so they say, never showed her face again at Court these last forty years.’

As I pondered on the lucklessness of serving the powerful the milkmaid raised her eyes and smiled at Joan. ‘Try my milk, mistress?’

‘We’ve no time, young doxy.’ Joan brushed the girl out of the way.

In sudden sympathy, I delved into the purse I kept round my waist, and handed her a coin.

The girl stared after me, which I found strange until I remembered my appearance. A servant offering charity to another of her rank? No wonder she stared so.

By the time we regained York House, carrying our heavy burden of tablecloths, I longed for my chamber. But Joan was not so easily appeased. ‘Put the cloths away in that chest. Time now to show you how to air the beds.’ She must have seen the droop of my shoulders because she laughed, not unkindly. ‘There are but twenty bedchambers in the Lord Keeper’s house. We shall not make you air them all.’

As she led me past the great portraits and rich hangings of the hall towards the oak staircase, she called for Mercy to come and help us. Already the steward was ordering his underlings to pull out the leaves of the vast table in the Great Hall and unhook the stools from underneath for midday dinner. Some scurried around with square trenchers in their arms, others with great silver jugs of wine and ale.

Joan led us into the first of the bedchambers, a large room a little like my own with carved ceiling, tapestries lining the walls and rich Turkey rugs strewn here and there on the rush floor which was weekly perfumed with rosemary. In the centre was a vast bed, hung with red taffeta fringed in gold.