by Mary Hoffman
“Sarah,” she says gently. “Alys thinks you are unhappy. Are you still grieving for your father?”
“Yes, but…” A huge lump rises in my throat. I feel worse than ever. I am grieving for him, of course, but mostly I’m unhappy because of other things. I don’t understand myself. I’m like a fish out of water, flapping and gasping.
“I’m wicked,” I blurt. “I don’t know why I’m so wicked, but I am. I’m lazy and bad, and even when Alys makes me say I’m sorry, I’m not, I just pretend. I’m so wicked I don’t even want to be sorry! So I know I’m going to hell.”
Her eyes open wide. “Goodness, child, no wonder you’re unhappy! You’re not wicked at all. You’re hurt and you’re angry. I can see it glowing in you, like a little fiery coal that you’re carrying about. You nurse it and blow on it to keep it bright. No wonder you’re in pain! Let go of it, Sarah. It is scorching a hole in your heart.”
I start to cry. “I don’t know how! I’m not like you! You had a vision of our Lord. I saw a little black imp who told me I don’t belong here! And I don’t. I don’t belong anywhere. Mother doesn’t love me any more. She likes Annot better than me. Why did she have to marry Richard de Wotton? Why did she keep Annot and send me away? Why do bad things happen? Why did our Lord send a miracle for you and not for Father, even though we prayed and prayed for him? I want things to be as they were. I can’t bear to stay here for ever and never go home!”
“Sarah, Sarah!” Her arms are around me. “Where shall I start? Is that what you thought? That you must stay here for ever?”
“Alys has,” I sob.
“Alys stays because she loves me and because she wants to, not because she has to!” She gives me a little shake. “As for the imp? Retro, Sathanas – be gone, Satan! I too have seen the devil. He is a liar! He is nothing! We will not listen to him! For the rest, Richard de Wotton is not a bad man. He and your mother haven’t sent you away for ever. In a year or two, they will send Annot here as well, and if you want to, you will go home. In the meantime, they know you are safe here. You will learn to read and write, which will be a great advantage to you. They mean well, Sarah!”
“Why didn’t they tell me this?” I wail.
“Why didn’t you ask? Perhaps they thought you knew.” She shakes me again. Her face is very serious. “Listen. You must trust the people you love! When I was still young – though you would think me old – I was given the best gift you could ever imagine. I saw and spoke with our blessed Lord! But I was just like you. I couldn’t understand why there is so much pain and suffering in the world. So I asked him. Me! I dared to ask our Lord! And he answered me! Think of it!”
“What… did he say?” I hiccup.
“Come here.” She leads me to her desk. There’s a book propped on it, open. “Can you read at all?”
“I know the ABC.” I peer at it in awe. “Did you write all of this?”
She nods. “Yes, and I have not yet finished. It is called The Showings of God’s Love. See if you can spell this line.”
I take a deep breath and cross myself. The letters dance before my eyes, but I recognise a great A, and next to it a little looping l. Then a snaky s, and h like a house with a chimney, and then a and l again. Slowly I spell out the whole line. “All… shall… b-be … well.”
I look at her. “‘All shall be well?’ Is that what our Lord told you?”
Her crumpled old cheek is close to mine. She looks into my eyes and nods.
“How can it be well?” I burst out. “When terrible things happen, and people die, and the priest says some people go to hell for ever—”
Lady Julian holds up a finger. “I do not know,” she says firmly. “So I keep on asking and wondering, and that is what my book is all about. But even if I don’t understand His answer, I trust it, Sarah, because our Blessed Lord loves us. And what seems impossible to us may be very easy for Him. He has promised me – all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
She stops. It’s very quiet in here. Cool and peaceful. The candle flame flickers. It makes a soft purring, fluttering sound, like a butterfly at a window. I gather up my courage.
“Then… may I ask you something else?”
“Of course, my child.”
“Can we… Would you…” I stop, twisting my fingers in my gown. “At home, we have a little white cat. She’s a very good mouser! And she was expecting kittens when I left. And—”
Lady Julian is laughing – actually laughing! “Now strangely enough,” she says, “the one animal I am allowed to keep is a cat, but my last died a year ago. I have decided it is time we acquired another. I shall send a message to your mother and ask that the next time Richard de Wotton rides into Norwich, she shall come with him and bring us one of those white kittens. Now, off you go. Wash your face and hands. Then run outside and say your prayers in God’s good sunshine.”
So I do. The sun is warm on my back. The bees are booming in the elm tree at the corner of the churchyard. The swallows are building nests under the church eaves and flashing low over the grass.
And I run, and I jump, and I sing.
Why I Chose Julian of Norwich
I wanted to write about Lady Julian of Norwich because she’s one of the most fascinating and mysterious of medieval women! She comes across in her writing as an intelligent, questioning person who actually challenges God about the existence of suffering and pain (she lived through the Black Death, so I imagine she would have known plenty about both).
It would seem a very odd decision today, to spend your whole life in one small room. It was unusual in medieval times, too. Only strong personalities could cope with it. I wanted to write a story about Lady Julian in which I could imagine her – a strong, compassionate woman – living a strange, hard life, but one she chose for herself and never regretted.
KATHERINE LANGRISH
Julian of Norwich Facts
Julian of Norwich was probably born in 1342. There is so much we don’t really know about her – we don’t know exactly when she was born or when she died, if she was ever married or had children, or who her parents were. We can’t even be sure of her real name. Thanks to her writing however, we do know that in May 1373, when she was ‘thirty and a half years old’, she fell so ill she was expected to die. While ill, she experienced a series of sixteen visions of Christ’s suffering on the cross, after which she was healed. She wrote two accounts of these visions, called The Showings of God’s Love, the first of which was the very first book known to have been written by a woman in English.
At some point, Julian became a holy anchoress – a person who retires from the world like a hermit, to live and pray alone in one tiny cell or small room. Lady Julian’s cell was attached to the church of St Julian and St Edward’s, in Norwich, and this may be why we know her as ‘Julian’. Anchoresses were expected to pray much of the time, like nuns, but they also provided spiritual and mental comfort and advice – rather like the medieval version of a psychiatrist. Julian’s mixture of faith, mysticism and common sense made her famous in her own city of Norwich and people came to visit her from other towns too.
Lady Julian of Norwich died in around 1416. Her writing is still widely read today and has had much influence on Christian thought.
Learn to Die
A story about Lady Jane Grey
(1537–54)
BY MARY HOFFMAN
THE DARK-HAIRED MAN GRIPPED the rail of the ship, but not in fear of the waves. He could not believe that he was at last seeing the coast of England disappearing in the distance. It was the second time he had fled from a country to escape execution for his religion, but this time, he had a wife and small child to think about.
They were huddled below deck, feeling sick, and as soon as the last sight of England had faded, the man went down to join them, taking his son in his arms and kissing his head. Let the boy sleep till they reached the coast of France – he would watch over him. Some people you could save, e
ven if others had gone beyond your reach.
They were just three little girls when I met them in 1550: the brains, the beauty and the determined one. Mind you, they were all strong-willed, though Katherine, the middle daughter, was a lot more easy-going than her sisters. I was to teach the two older girls Italian; they were already fluent in French and Latin, with Jane knowing Greek too.
Lady Jane Grey was thirteen years old and small for her age but her mind was impressive. She already preferred books and learning to hunting and dancing.
At first, she was stiff and formal in all our lessons and I preferred her pretty, laughing little sister Katherine. But gradually, Jane thawed towards me, especially when she discovered just how much I shared her views about the new religion.
And once she started to talk to me properly, I found out that she had already lived through more troubled times than most women twice her age. I hadn’t paid all that much attention to events in England in the last few years. I’d been in prison in Rome for two of them.
Then Jane told me about Catherine Parr.
“She was a second mother to me,” she said. “And much less strict than my real one.”
It was true that Jane’s mother was a rather stern figure. She was always pleasant to me though. And her husband, the Marquis, was positively good company.
“I had so many beautiful new dresses when I lived with Catherine at Seymour Place,” Jane told me. “And a woman just to dress my hair.”
I couldn’t imagine serious little Jane being entranced by such things. The first time I met her, she surprised me by telling me she could say ‘learn to die’ in half a dozen languages. Her first tutor had thought that all Christian children should be given such stern sentences to translate. But, once she started talking about Catherine, she seemed much less reserved.
“She was the kindest, warmest person I have ever met,” she said sadly. “And so in love with… with him.”
Jane’s brown eyes glittered when she mentioned this man, but not from love or grief, as I learned later.
“Catherine had been queen – you know that, don’t you?” she said.
“Just assume I know nothing about the court, my lady,” I said.
“She was Henry’s last queen,” said Jane. “And married her next husband in secret, very soon after the king died.”
“That was the him she was so in love with?”
“Thomas Seymour, the Baron of Sudeley,” said Jane, looking as if the very name tasted bad in her mouth.
“Why are you so bitter about him? Did he harm you?”
“Not me. But he was my guardian and he should have protected my reputation. Did you know he paid my father two thousand pounds to have me living with them?”
I was shocked at such a sum – what he had been buying for that two thousand pounds? I was never able to understand English politics.
“He was a flirt,” said Jane. “And a rogue. But very handsome. Catherine adored him and soon she was carrying his child.”
It was enough to make a religious man like me blush to hear such a young girl talk of such things, but I wanted to know what the flirty rogue had done to win her disapproval. Her mouth had shrivelled like a prune when she’d said his name.
“He was the old king’s brother-in-law.”
“Ah. You know I get confused by all those wives.”
“He was the new king’s uncle, brother to his mother, Jane Seymour.”
“You say he was. He is dead?”
“They say the king will soon have no uncles,” said Jane. “He beheaded Thomas Seymour two years ago but I would put no wager on Edward Seymour – Thomas’s brother – keeping his head on his shoulders for long. He has already been imprisoned in the Tower once.”
I shuddered. What a country had I found myself in! Had I fled the death sentence in Rome only to find myself in a nest of murderers and fanatics? And little Jane was so calm about it – maybe this was how noble people treated life and death?
“I’m sure it was his treachery and faithlessness that killed poor Catherine Parr,” Jane told me.
“You are talking about Thomas Seymour?”
“He behaved disgracefully with my cousin Elizabeth, who was another of his wards. Going into her bedchamber and tickling her and romping under the bedclothes when he was only half-dressed and bare-legged. And she, King Edward’s sister! But maybe that’s why the baron was interested in her?”
Was this the way young ladies of the English aristocracy talked? Even though Jane clearly disapproved and was too pure and prim to behave that way herself.
“And then when Catherine was heavy with Seymour’s child, she found him trying to kiss and cuddle Elizabeth, so my cousin was sent away.”
She looked really sad now.
“I didn’t miss Elizabeth – she was always very cold to me – but I’d rather Thomas had been sent away instead. I had to go to Gloucestershire with poor Catherine, who was weeping her eyes out, and wait with her until her child was born.”
“What happened to Seymour?”
“Oh, he came for the birth. It was a little girl. But Catherine was dead within the week. And they had the most tremendous rows in those last days – shouting and crying – I’m sure that’s what killed her.”
“Where is the child now?”
“Dead, like both her parents.”
I soon learned that, though he had died nearly three years ago, Thomas Seymour still played an active part in the household of the Marquis of Dorset, Henry Grey. Seymour’s great scheme had been to marry his young ward Jane to the new king. They had played together as children and now, old enough to be betrothed, they shared the same serious approach to ideas and religion. It seemed that Thomas Seymour’s plan might work after all.
The marquis would have liked that. He was about my age, with as dark a beard as mine but a florid English colour to his face. I don’t know if he was more ambitious than he was vain; the gossips said he liked to be referred to as ‘prince’ in private. And within a year of my coming to teach the Grey girls Italian, their father was already a much more important person than when he first employed me.
It came about because of a tragedy in the family. Two little boys died on the same day in July – of the sweating sickness – and at a blow the male heirs to the title Duke of Suffolk were wiped out. They were Jane’s late grandfather’s children by his last wife, and great favourites of my lady. But by the autumn, the tragedy had turned to advantage for Henry Grey, when the young king gave him the title of Duke of Suffolk. In fact, now that I look back towards England and the past, I see that day as the beginning of all Lady Jane’s troubles.
That was the day I saw King Edward for the first time. He was a slight figure, with hair as burnished gold as an angel’s, not exactly kingly, but with a good presence for one so young. He would have made a good match for Lady Jane.
But it was not to be.
Henry Grey and his friend John Dudley, recently invested with the title Duke of Northumberland and a frequent visitor to the Grey household, had other ideas.
It was still winter when I found my lady in tears. I thought at first she wept for Edward Seymour, Thomas’s brother, who had just been executed – as Jane had predicted – at the Tower of London.
“No, I do not waste a tear on another Seymour,” she said, fiercely brushing her eyes with her handkerchief. “But my sister’s maid has told her and she has told me that it is all over the servants’ quarters that… I am to be married.”
Servants hear a lot when lords regard them as no more important than a bucket.
“Should I congratulate you, my lady?”
“I don’t want to marry Guildford Dudley!”
The Duke of Northumberland’s son. It had surprised me that this was what the two dukes had been plotting – not marriage to the king.
“Is he not a handsome choice?” I asked.
I had seen young Dudley and he was a good-looking youth of sixteen, tall and fair-haired.
Lady J
ane fixed me with one of her sternest stares.
“He is a fourth son! And I’ve heard I am his second choice. The rumours are that he wanted to marry my cousin Margaret but she wouldn’t have him. Or at least her father wouldn’t have the Duke of Northumberland. After all, marriages aren’t made between bride and groom in families like ours.”
I had never heard her so bitter. Perhaps she was disappointed at the thought of not being Queen of England after all? She was certainly much changed from the little maid who had delighted in the gorgeous gowns that Catherine Parr had given her, preferring instead to dress very simply and usually in black. Her sister Katherine had told me that the Lady Mary, the king’s sister, had sent Jane a most beautiful dress of gold and silver cloth at Christmas, yet Jane had just said, “What am I to do with this?” and put on one of her old plain robes.
“She could have given it to me at least,” Katherine, who at eleven, was far less pious than her older sister, had wailed.
But Jane had tremendous self-control; she soon recovered her composure and concentrated on the day’s lesson.
It wasn’t till the next year that the rumours of her betrothal surfaced again. By this time it was clear that the young king would not live to be married to Jane or anyone else; he was still only fifteen but had never recovered from the terrible illness of the lungs he fell sick with at the beginning of the year. Was that why she accepted Dudley? I don’t think she was any happier about the idea than she had been the year before, but the pressure from her father and Northumberland was too great to resist.
“My little sister Mary and I are to be married too,” said young Katherine, with much more enthusiasm than her elder sister had ever shown.
