The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘But keeping my nose clean.’

  He dabbed an index finger into a scattering of flour and onto the tip of her nose. ‘That’s what you think,’ and then he was gone, presumably in search of Bax.

  Antony looked appreciatively after him; Margie’s expression, as she glanced up with reluctance from a hedgehog, was momentarily glazed but turned to one of disgust. Katherine’s mordant stare at me across the bench made me laugh.

  ‘They are so alike, aren’t they?’ she said. ‘Edward and Thomas.’ But seeing she had me baffled, she clarified, ‘In looks, I mean.’

  Oh, well, yes, perhaps, although I hadn’t really ever thought about it. I’d grown up with them and didn’t look at them as she did, as an outsider. And they were so utterly different in temperament that the possibility of there being any similarity whatsoever between them had never crossed my mind. In reply, I muttered something non-committal.

  ‘Both so like your father,’ she enthused, kneading the gingerbread dough. ‘Good-looking man, your father.’

  Really? My father was my father, as far as I was concerned: good-looking simply didn’t apply. In his mid-forties, he was greying, but once upon a time he must have been black-haired, and of course his eyes were as dark as they’d ever been. He was still as lithe, too, as a boy. Kneading my own dough, I recalled the story of my parents’ courtship, which they’d sometimes tell as a comic turn when we were young. Katherine wouldn’t have heard it. We children used to beg to hear it, but by the time Katherine arrived, most of us had outgrown it: it had had its day; we were bored by it and it was becoming embarrassing.

  The story was that my father had fallen for my mother when he’d first set eyes on her and had vowed to win her heart, but he’d had his work cut out for him because she was Margery Went-worth, descendant of the Plantagenets, of Hotspur himself, and was in the service of the Countess of Surrey. Yes, Margery Wentworth was someone, in the old days: impeccably connected, well regarded and accomplished. Twenty-three, too.

  And what was her suitor, at that time? Nothing much, compared. A lad of eighteen. ‘So I made a pest of myself,’ he used to tell us, with characteristic kindness even for his own young self. It had been hard for me to imagine: he’d become such a diffident man; sweet natured, but happiest withdrawing into the company of his dogs, the old dogs who’d retired from hunting to the fireside. ‘I had to make a pest of myself or she wasn’t going to so much as look at me,’ he’d told us, and, at that, my mother would roll her eyes, cheerfully long suffering. He’d even written poems for her, apparently.

  Elizabeth would usually ask my mother, ‘Didn’t he annoy you? Didn’t you just want to get rid of him?’ Once, though, she’d asked, ‘Was he handsome?’ and my mother, caught by surprise, had replied before she knew it, ‘He was, actually.’

  To which my father had said, ‘Your mother was a real beauty,’ adding, hurriedly, ’still is, of course.’

  She wasn’t, though, not really, not by then, or not that I could see. She had a pleasant enough face, as round as our father’s was angular, but ten pregnancies had taken their toll and by her late forties she was a large, ungainly lady with no inclination to dress up or to fuss in any way over her appearance: by the time I was fifteen, those days were long gone. Indeed, I couldn’t recall mention of her ever having been back to court after she’d married.

  Antony drew Katherine’s attention to the flour on her nose, ‘You need to wipe that off.’

  But she stuck that daubed nose in the air, enjoying it, and challenged, ‘Why should I? He can.’ Thomas, she meant. ‘He put it there.’

  And so it was Edward who ended up wiping her clean, that evening at the chapel door. He did so absently, with a fond half-smile, as if flour-splattering was a foible of hers, new to him, and no doubt thinking it to have been innocently acquired.

  Often during those first days of Katherine’s at Wolf Hall, I’d feel something like pride at how familiar most of us were able to be with her and she in turn could be with us. Thomas could be Thomas, for instance, tiresome though he was, and she’d take it in good spirit. But that was only when I gave it any thought at all, which usually I didn’t. Edward should’ve been the one giving consideration to how she was settling in, but for him, I suspect, she was done and dusted, in that he’d married her: it was done, he’d married her. Edward has never been someone to look back. Which, paradoxically, meant that in the case of his wife, he didn’t see what was coming.

  Who did, though? Katherine didn’t put a foot wrong, and our St John’s feast allowed her to show just how good she was not only with us, but with everyone else. I dreaded social occasions, clueless as to what to say to anyone, but that evening I stuck by her side and she did enough socialising for us both. She danced beautifully, too, not so much because of her technique as her lightness of step and her bearing: that long, slender, effortlessly straight back of hers. Me, I was born a clodhopper; even back when I was slight, I was heavy on my feet. Not only was Katherine a good dancer, but she was even a good spectator; from the sidelines she’d be first to be clapping a rhythm, unabashed, urging the others on, and at the end she’d applaud – Oh, well done, Dottie! – so that we all had to follow, bringing dimples to Dottie’s anxious little face.

  She retired early, though, that evening, only a little later than the children. Sidling up behind Edward, who was in conversation with Barbara’s father, she encircled his waist with her arms so that he had to extricate himself before he could turn to her. I didn’t overhear what she said, but evidently she was making her excuses, and she did look tired: lilac shadows beneath her eyes. Wine wouldn’t have been the reason, because she didn’t much drink; that evening she’d declined all offers of wine with a wrinkle of her nose, even the lovely, syrupy, spicy hippocras.

  Warm milk was what she wanted; that was what I discovered shortly afterwards, going into the kitchen to replenish a bowl of almonds. There she was, holding a pan over a brazier, and she smiled that smile of hers when she asked me, ‘Want some?’

  I didn’t – milk was for children – but I rather liked that she did. She was a creature of whim, I felt, and unafraid to go and get what she wanted. I’d seen something of that when she’d made her excuses, back in Hall; all evening, she’d seemed so keen to please, but then, when she’d had enough, she hadn’t hung around for the sake of appearances. I was impressed. Back then I was easily impressed.

  Two days later, some little gingerbread medallions left over from our St John’s feast were muslin-wrapped and ribbon-tied in Katherine’s hand as she waited to leave with Edward to visit one of our tenant families. The father of the family had been injured a week earlier in a fall from a cart, and was still unable even to sit up. Initially, Edward had taken the barber-surgeon to him, and also a lot of my mother’s salves and syrups; now he was visiting again to take provisions to the family and find out what else he might be able to do. My mother had packed baskets with bread, one of her cheeses, potted meat, a bird pie, peas and beans. I happened to be standing alongside my brother and sister-in-law in the doorway because I was calling across the courtyard for Antony to come in and give his boots and, I hoped, everyone else’s a polish. I’d already called three or four times. Beside me, Edward asked, ‘What’s that?’ and the sharpness in his query had me look around at him, but it was his wife he’d addressed: he was peering at the pretty little package in her hand.

  She paid no heed to the note of challenge. ‘It’s what’s left of those gingerbreads,’ she told him cheerily, and even dangled the package as if to entice him.

  I beckoned exaggeratedly for Antony, who was trying and failing to persuade Mort, our cat, to accompany him.

  Edward’s brief laugh was dismissive, incredulous, exasperated, perhaps even ridiculing. Katherine didn’t let it pass: ‘What?’ Without looking round at her, I imagined her head cocked to prise an honest answer from him.

  ‘Well,’ he seemed hardly able to bring himself to have to say it, so obvious it was to him, ‘it’s no
t gingerbread they need, is it.’

  He was right, of course, but then he was always right as far as I was concerned. The handful of muslin glowed ribbon-soft in the corner of my eye and I saw it, now, for what it was: a frivolity. That family needed sustenance; what they needed was my mother’s basketloads of food.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Katherine spoke pleasantly, but I sensed her standing taller and I was surprised: no one ever stood up to Edward; Thomas would goad him, yes, but that was just for the sake of it. I was listening hard even as I called again for Antony and, patience depleted, turned to leave him to follow me, Mort or no Mort.

  ‘It’s bread they need,’ Edward was saying emphatically but kindly, as if explaining to a child.

  ‘And they’re getting bread,’ was Katherine’s mild reply, and actually there was no arguing with that, either. They were getting the staples, plenty of them – I was having to step around all the baskets – and the gift of biscuits was extra. And so that, suddenly, was how I saw it: why not gingerbread?

  Antony began yelling for me and I turned to find him bounding towards me, having given up on the cat.

  Edward was being unreasonable, I realised; he was right, but still he was being unreasonable.

  He knew it, too, because now he was trying to shrug off his disdain, adopting in its place an airy, unconvincing resignation: Oh, all right, bring along your little treats. Marvellously, though, she didn’t allow him get away with it. She insisted on his full attention as Antony bolted past. ‘Edward . . .’ His name spoken softly as if she was letting him on something. ‘There are children in that family.’

  He didn’t argue, or not as I heard as I hurried off with Antony. A final glimpse revealed my eldest brother to be standing humbled, looking away over the courtyard, keeping his face averted from his wife.

  So he could be right but at the same time unreasonable, and how liberating it was for me to realise it. Katherine was good for him, I decided, she was really good for him. He needed her: there were still things for him to learn, and he could learn them from her.

  What I might have seen, though, just as easily, were two people who would never, even remotely, see eye to eye.

  5

  Edward left it almost a month from the wedding before he allowed work to take him away overnight from his new wife and, that evening, she didn’t join us – me, my mother and my sisters – in the parlour after prayers. Beyond the windows the cooling air was deep with birdsong. My father had gone with his old dogs for their last walk of the day, accompanied by Father James, and Harry and Thomas were hawking, taking advantage of the meltingly long dusk. Antony was with them for a while, but then suddenly he was back, bursting in on us, piping, ‘Where’s Katherine? I need to ask her something.’

  Roused, my mother blinked heavily and realised, ‘You need to go to bed, Antony.’

  Yes, though, where was she?

  My mother looked to Elizabeth – ‘Elizabeth . . .’ – who returned an insolently big-eyed stare, a parody of incomprehension, Not my job. She was right: it was always me who put Antony to bed. My mother countered, ‘Jane’s going to go and find Katherine, check she’s all right.’

  Was I?

  ‘I’ll go.’ Margie laid aside her needlework.

  My mother sighed. ‘No, Margie.’

  Margie stood up to inform me, ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘Margie, no.’ My mother told her to finish up her stitching and pack it away; time for bed for her, too.

  Margie’s frown made abundantly clear her disappointment, but I rather hoped she’d put up more of a fight because although it was fine for me to be with Katherine during the daytime, she had probably retired to her room – hers and Edward’s, even if on this occasion he wasn’t in it – and I felt uncomfortable at the prospect of following her there, uninvited.

  ‘Jane . . .’ my mother prompted.

  As I climbed the steps to their door, my reluctant footsteps rebounded on me and my heart made its disquiet felt. I knocked warily, knowing that such a knock was ridiculous: either I intended to be heard or I didn’t. No response, but I felt I couldn’t knock again – that’d be too much. Instead, I called to her, doing my level best to sound reassuring rather than interrogatory. My anxiety, though, was unfounded, because her reply was cheerful and welcoming: ‘Come on in!’

  I knew the room, of course – intimately, even, because my mother and I had furnished it. A couple of days before Katherine’s arrival, my mother and I had wrestled with the heavy bed-hangings that had once been my grandparents’ - a design of seed-rich pomegranates swelling and splitting to reveal rubied hearts – and for several months beforehand my mother had been embroidering the coverlet and pillows with butterflies in mid-shy.

  When the door opened, though, that evening when Katherine was alone in there, I saw how different those fruits and butterflies were from when they had been ours. They had a life now; around her, they’d come alive, the fruits no longer just a weight of thread as they’d been in my arms, and the butterflies so much more than regular little stitches in my mother’s lap. It was only as we’d intended, of course, that all this be properly hers. Those fruits and butterflies looked as Katherine did, in that room: glamorous, gleaming. There she was, in the middle of it all, reclined on her bed in her nightdress, and, actually, she wasn’t alone. Mort, who should’ve been making better use of his time, in the granary for starters, was pressing himself alongside her, his spine undulating beneath the rhythmic sweep of her hand. Her hair was loose over her shoulders and I was surprised by how wavy it was. She was propped up on a lot of cushions, many more than my mother and I had left there for the newly-weds. They must have come squashed in the two chests that had accompanied her on the two-day journey from Horton.

  I was taken aback, didn’t know what to make of what I saw because no one at Wolf Hall ever reclined on beds. No Seymour would go voluntarily to bed, and certainly wouldn’t make something of it when there. Our beds were functional, were there to take the strain when we could no longer stand on our own two feet. We were only ever brought to bed by weariness or sickness; our beds were where we gave up on each day, and, in the end, life. But Katherine didn’t look weary or sick – quite the contrary. And, anyway, beds for me back then meant hard work: they needed to be kept free of mites and bugs and fleas (oh how I itched to get Mort off there), to be laundered, aired and the mattresses beaten, and then to be dressed, equipped with covers and hangings enough to shut out the night-time chill. Perhaps my mother had started something with those beautiful butterflies: perhaps it was she, I felt, who had inadvertently encouraged her daughter-in-law differently.

  Moreover, the whole room was aglow. It was midsummer and darkness was still a couple of hours away, but Katherine had candles burning, lots of them, little ones on the hearth on what looked to be a piece of slate. They were beeswax, too, not tallow; no fatty smoke but instead a subtle, slightly spicy aroma. Where had she found beeswax candles? Not in our chandlery cupboard, that was for sure; we had them, yes, but only a few, for special occasions, and not these little ones. Katherine’s candles twinkled like stars in the dark cavern of the fireplace.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, which was when I realised I hadn’t: I’d halted on the threshold, the doorway gaping around me. So I did as she said, pulling the door closed behind me, and she patted the bed to indicate that I should sit there, Mort complaining at the momentary absence of her hand with a questing lift of his head.

  Again I hesitated. The newly-weds’ bed, where, as I pictured it, the pair of them would lie side by side like statues on a tomb, well dressed, peaceful and facing resolutely heavenwards even in their sleep. I perched on the edge and she didn’t take issue with it, didn’t encourage me any closer. My feet stayed square on the floor, not relinquishing it. I felt I should explain myself: ‘My mother sent me.’

  She shrugged this off, and for a while neither of us spoke. I was thinking of the others downstairs, how odd and how good it was to have left them there. Kath
erine’s stroking of Mort continued apace; the mattress seemed to bow with each sweep of her hand, although of course in actuality it didn’t. Nevertheless, it lulled me and I shut my eyes, inhaling the beeswax fragrance, chasing it with my concentration, teasing it from the air before it escaped from the open window. Outside, the dusk was swift-happy, the bats yet to swoop in on it. Eventually, I offered a heartfelt, ‘It’s lovely in here,’ because the loveliness was palpable and as such, I felt, should be acknowledged. Again, though, a shrug from Katherine, as if the loveliness was by the by, was natural to her, something that she couldn’t help.

  This, then, was how my brother now ended the days when he was home. What, I wondered, did he make of it? Very occasionally, over the years, he had mentioned to us the fabulous decor of the king’s great halls and great watching chambers, and of Francis Bryan’s lavish London house: gilded ceilings and walls, and jewel-like windows; thick Turkish carpets, and solid gold platters enamelled with roses. What was here in his room was a very different kind of loveliness: the stars spluttering in pools of wax; the sparkle-threaded, scratchy wadding of cushions; the cosseted cat. Perhaps, though, it occurred to me, he hadn’t actually ever seen it; perhaps she had been saving it as a comfort for herself when he was gone.

  She sighed contentedly. ‘You know, Janey, this was what I dreamt of,’ and the warmth and in her voice told me that, in her view, she’d been right to dream of it, she’d been more than vindicated. It had been a good dream to have, said the wonder in her voice, but the reality was even better.

  We Seymours didn’t have dreams. Well, Thomas did, that was obvious, but despite no one in our household saying as much, I knew it was seen as his failing: impetuous and embarrassing. We Seymours didn’t acknowledge dreams; we were practical people. Plans, yes, plans were acceptable, or even laudable: Edward had plans; plans were calculated and achievable, or certainly Edward’s were. Dreams, though, were somehow improper, we didn’t lavish dreams on ourselves. With considerable ease, though, Katherine was owning up to doing just that.