The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  Will Dormer, though? No. No heart, and could Katherine really not see that? Katherine, who’d fallen in love with Edward; Edward, who was everything that Will Dormer wasn’t. It made no sense to me that she of all people failed to see it; it even sort of scared me that she didn’t.

  Unfortunately, the boys had sensed our attention on them and were rising to it.

  ‘He’s coming over,’ Katherine hissed excitedly.

  ‘Ladies!’ Thomas heralded their approach.

  Katherine laughed. ‘Gentlemen!’

  Will Dormer honoured her with one of his calculatedly bashful smiles and Thomas cocked his head towards the table of ale jugs.

  ‘We need a top-up,’ he explained, before adding, in passing, to his sister-in-law, ‘Your husband’s been hitting the wine hard.’

  ‘Has he?’ She was surprised, and me, too, because Edward never drank to excess. We both looked over to see that Edward was dishevelled, a little more so than might’ve been expected of any of us under the circumstances, but especially of him. There was the inattentiveness, too, accompanied by a distinctly downcast air. Had he misjudged? – had one too many cups to try to slake his thirst? Easily done, I supposed, on such an evening, but surely not by Edward. Edward never made mistakes.

  Thomas grinned. ‘He certainly has. Problem is, he doesn’t know how to handle it,’ the implication being that, by contrast, he and Will did. ‘He’ll be no use to you tonight.’

  Rather than giving him the withering stare he deserved, Katherine merely looked blank. ‘I’d better—’

  ‘Leave him,’ said Thomas, as he and Will strode off towards the table of jugs.

  Their exchange had drawn Edward’s bleary attention, I noticed, but when Thomas moved away, Edward’s eyes stayed with his wife, an intense, questing gaze, as if he were trying hard to remember something about her. My father turned, the better to include him in the conversation with Mr Dormer, but to his obvious surprise saw at once that his eldest son was a lost cause and hastily covered for him by returning to Mr Dormer with uncharacteristic vigour, as if in a debate. Left to his own devices, Edward looked down again, morosely, into his cup.

  I was worried. ‘Edward’s always so careful,’ I said. ‘I’ve never seen him even the slightest bit drunk.’ Thomas, yes, of course, endlessly, and Harry was merry on occasion, but never Edward.

  Katherine affected antagonism and boredom, rolling her eyes: Let him stew.

  Edward looked poorly, though. He needed help. Any worse and he’d be attracting Dormer-attention, and when he sobered up, he’d be mortified. He’d made a mistake – somehow, incredible though it was, he’d made a mistake – and he needed saving from himself.

  ‘Should—?’ Should we do something? What, I didn’t know, but surely Katherine would know.

  She declined to meet my eye. ‘Leave him.’

  Thomas’s words coming from her, but with added pique. Edward was showing her up, letting her down, and she was going to make him pay, that was what her belligerence made clear. She was the wronged wife, suddenly, and I was awed into silence because what did I know of being a wife of any kind? It left me distinctly uneasy, though.

  Perhaps a quarter of an hour passed, during which time he didn’t refill his cup and I hoped he’d realised he was in trouble and was sobering up. While Katherine and I were busy helping Lil to refill the jugs, I kept him in the corner of my eye. He’d managed to excuse himself from my father and Mr Dormer’s company, retreating to a bench against the wall of the house, which kept him out of trouble for a while but then came a problem when he tried to get back up: he lurched like a wounded beast and plonked back down, the bench banging the wall. I prayed that no one else had noticed, but Katherine tutted with exasperation, despairing of him, muttering viciously, ‘What’s the matter with him?’

  Well, it was all too horribly clear what was the matter with him. Suddenly she was gone from my side, simply slipping over there to him, and so, belatedly, I felt, it was going to be all right. She’d made her point but, at last, was going to do her wifely duty, was going to help him.

  She stood over him, bending down but with her hands clasped in front of her skirts like a counterbalance; attending to him but, I saw, keeping her distance, which he didn’t like, making far too much of reciprocating, of returning her attention, looking up into her face with a slow, inaccurate swing of his heavy head. This sullen, rude Edward wasn’t the Edward I knew, and my heart went into freefall. Katherine’s presence was only antagonising him.

  Instinctively, Katherine began to glance around, presumably to look for help, before checking herself, probably fearful of drawing unwelcome attention. I doubted she’d got away with it, though, Mrs Dormer’s curiosity regarding all matters Seymour being best described as athletic. Katherine looked so alone, over there. It’d been Edward who’d been hopelessly isolated, a moment ago, frowning down into his cup, but now that was at least as true of his wife. I should do something – but what?

  Then Katherine straightened, Edward rearing back to keep his eyes on hers, and again there was insolence in the reeling, a challenge in it. I saw – didn’t hear – that he said something to her, an utterance which, on impact, had her take a step back. Her own response was similarly minimal, just a word or two: ‘Stop it,’ perhaps, or, ‘Don’t.’

  I was biting my lip, I realised, and my palms were slick with sweat. She did now glance properly around, right around, but the glance slid past my parents, who were belatedly and shamefacedly making themselves available, pausing their respective conversations and turning in her direction but nevertheless obviously reluctant to be called upon. Katherine couldn’t bring herself to look to them; it was to me, instead, that she looked. There was nothing in the look, none of the self-righteousness of the wronged wife; there was just the fact of it, and I found it all the more powerful for that. She was at a loss, utterly at a loss, and it was to me that she looked for help.

  Meanwhile, Edward seemed to be regretting whatever it was that he’d said to her, lowering his face into his hands and rubbing his eyes as if trying to bring himself to his senses. Well, it was too late for that. An ominous air had descended on the terrace to which only Thomas and Will Dormer paid no mind, Thomas teasing Lil for some alleged clumsiness and Will Dormer egging him on. I flushed with fury for Thomas: was he really oblivious, or did he just not care? Was he pleased, even?

  If no one else was going to make the move to help, I realised, I’d have to do it. Despite having no idea of what actually I might do, I made myself take the first step and then there I was, headed for my brother and sister-in-law, making sure to saunter as if dropping by for a chat. In truth, my blood was chaotic inside me. I had the sense of stepping into the middle of a situation from which I wouldn’t easily be able to extricate myself, had the sense of it closing over my head, but I knew I could no longer stand by. Some unpleasantness had developed between my brother and his wife, and perfectly understandable though it might be, the result of one cup of wine too many on this hottest of nights, it was happening in front of everyone, so it had to stop.

  When I reached the pair of them, Katherine took a breath as if to speak, but nothing came and she merely stood there, in a kind of standing back. Abandoning the pretence of the casual chat, I did what she’d so far resisted doing: crouched down in front of Edward so that our eyes were level.

  ‘Edward?’

  I’d probably never before been so close to him. He was stubbled – the barber had visited, that morning, but already he was stubbled – and his breath was wine-dank.

  ‘Jane . . .’ he sighed, full of feeling, although which particular feeling, I didn’t know. ‘Jane . . .’

  It felt improper to be so close to him and in receipt of such heartfelt expression. Katherine shifted, and in that scratch of her soles on dirt-dry stone I heard her barely contained desperation to be elsewhere. In the same instant, I recognised what it was that had resounded in Edward’s sigh: despair. So, from Katherine, desperation, and from E
dward, despair: that was when I had an inkling that this was something more than one cup too many. But I didn’t have time to think about it, because Edward’s eyes, which I’d taken to be red from exhaustion, turned glossy with tears and all that concerned me was how best to get him away from everyone.

  Careful to sound sympathetic, I whispered, ‘You’re not well,’ while trying to think how we could most easily get him to his bed. Under any other circumstances, it would be Edward to whom I’d look for ideas. Thomas could provide physical assistance, if he could be made to help; Harry hadn’t been around for a while, but Thomas was there on the terrace and he’d be strong enough to take Edward’s weight. No less importantly, he could carry off any fracas with aplomb, his mere presence somehow persuading everyone that everything, however awry, was in fact just fine, even hilarious. His refusal to come to Edward’s aid, though, was uncomfortably obvious, and, even as I silently raged at him, I knew there was no point forcing him because that’d only end up looking worse.

  It didn’t occur to me to turn to my parents; for them, I was feeling only an increasingly familiar exasperation. My mother, always ready enough with that disappointed expression of hers but never actually voicing what was on her mind; and my father being kind, but in retreat from family life.

  ‘You’re not well,’ I repeated to Edward, intending it as reassurance: That’s all it is, you’re not well. ‘You need to sleep this off. Can you come with me?’

  ‘Oh, Jane . . .’ The groan was an appeal, but for what? He was appealing to me not as his little sister, but as someone who might understand something of what he was going through, although actually I didn’t. Gently, I took his arm, gauging how cooperative he might be, before looking to Katherine to take his other arm. She didn’t hesitate and he offered no resistance, probably glad to be going.

  All the way back into the house, he gave us no trouble; on the contrary, did his best for us, concentrating on each and every step. One of the dogs – dear old Bear – chose to escort us, which rather dignified our retreat. Indoors, the stairs presented a challenge but, by ordering Bear to stay at the bottom and then taking it slowly, we managed. Only at their door, and despite a pleading look from Katherine, did I extricate myself from the pair of them, by which time all I felt was relief. I’d had a job to do and I’d done it: that was all I could think at the time, and I was more than ready to turn away and put it behind me.

  9

  I don’t think anything quite like that did happen again, although I suppose I might have been too busy to notice because August, more than any other month, demanded the utmost of us from dawn to sundown. We girls were harvesting from the gardens and orchard, pulling up bulbs and roots, picking herbs and pods, fruits and berries, teasing currants intact from bushes and whacking walnuts from branches, and then preparing our gains to last us the rest of the year. We’d spread our spoils on sacking in the sun or hang it in bunches to dry, or slice or strain it for stewing and cramming into jars. We layered it with spices and packed it with sugar or drenched it in verjuice, then tamped it down and left it to seal in the heat of the hearth.

  Elizabeth couldn’t pick strawberries – the leaves gave her a rash – but more than made up for it by wielding a big stick at the walnut trees while the children scurried to gather the fallen nuts and Katherine pushed a needle tip into each case to judge for ripeness. I did the pickling: it was left to me because, in my mother’s view, I could be relied upon to make the least mess of that messiest of jobs. Walnuts were undoubtedly the worst, but the red fruits and blackcurrants were by no means easy and we spent the month swaddled in aprons which, laid over bushes to dry in the evenings, were suggestive of the scene of a catastrophe. Those aprons provided no protection for our hands, of course, and every nail bed was dark-stained, every fissure and fingertip whorl vivid.

  Our work in the kitchen had to fit around Bax’s roasting of half an ox or steer every day for the workers in the fields, and my mother baking the bread to go with it. The supposedly cooling fly-deterrent fern fronds hung at the kitchen window were annoyingly ineffective, but we knew there were worse places to be. The brewhouse, for one: even from across the courtyard we could hear the swearing of the brewer at his scald-scarred sidekick, the two of them stuck in the heat there together for the month to brew the whole hogshead of ale that was downed daily by the harvesters. And the mouthy brewer wasn’t the only reason that a step outside provided less than a breath of fresh air: Moll and Lil were doing a lot of bleaching, so the courtyard was crowded with urine-filled barrels.

  The Seymour men were over at the household farm, Suddene, every day of that month, rolling up their sleeves and getting down to harvest alongside our villagers. Bax’s roast was taken into the field in the late morning, but at the end of the working day everyone trooped up to Wolf Hall for supper. Sometimes the labourers’ children brought bundles of kindling to exchange for biscuits but they were just as likely to present scrapes, bruises and sprains for my mother to treat, to say nothing that year of sunburn.

  Edward did his fair share of the physical labour at Suddene, but was also overseeing the workforce. Inevitably, under the circumstances, there were perceived injustices, and, occasionally, tempers would flare and he and the reeve would have to step in to calm the situation and try to resolve the dispute. As well as being responsible for their welfare, he also paid the workers’ wages, so, in the evenings, he’d stay up, frowning over ledgers, keeping records and making calculations, long after Katherine had gone to bed. They barely saw each other that month.

  Two feasts were celebrated in August, Assumption and St Bart’s, but, being so busy, we made minimal efforts for them and issued no invitations, although Harry’s Barbara joined us. Assumption Day was when Katherine and Barbara first met, because before then Barbara had spent a couple of months laid low by a cough and congestion. Barbara was a pretty, petite blonde who never said much – or not in Seymour company – but that evening the prospective Seymour daughter-in-law basked in Katherine’s solicitous attention. Which was understandable, because Barbara was a likeable enough girl. I couldn’t claim to know her very well, but she was comfortable company. Thomas’s nickname for her – behind her back, behind Harry’s – was Boring Barbara, but, well, as Katherine caustically remarked to me, ‘You wonder, don’t you, who’ll ever be interesting enough for our Master Thomas.’

  Edward didn’t get drunk on those evenings, but then, he’d never make a mistake twice. He and his wife stayed close, often holding hands, and even now I can picture them strolling around together, Katherine’s arm swinging with Edward on the end of it. He’d be working his thumb back and forth over the base of hers in what I took to be a soothing gesture, absently done, although, come to think of it, Edward was never less than mindful. At the time, I saw those joined hands slung between the two of them as an intimacy, but I suppose I could just as easily have seen them as a dead weight.

  And then, before we knew it, we were into September, nearing the end of the farming year and about to knuckle down to a new one. The year was turning, moving on from the wedding, so that Katherine was becoming just another Seymour, just as it should have been. The wool-winders were about to descend on Wolf Hall, but they were migrants, skilled workers, able to look after themselves, and so we girls could stay busy in the orchard and along the hedgerows. Sometimes, Thomas would oblige by climbing up into the trees to pick for us, from where he’d taunt us with how far he could see – ‘Hey, it’s really good up here!’ – and Katherine would yell back that he should get a move on, ‘Because some of us have work to do.’

  We certainly did, because in place of the bright-eyed summer berries came autumn’s big, thick-skinned, fibrous fruits with their pips and cores. Whatever we couldn’t preserve, we stored, which is where Antony made himself particularly useful, the apple loft being his domain because of his enthusiasm for spiders (‘The bigger, the better!’).

  The days were still warm for the time of year although no longer in the mornings
and evenings, which tended to catch me unawares. The morning air had a sharpness at which, inexplicably, my stomach tightened; and at the end of an afternoon I’d step outside and, before I was quite ready for it, there was dusk. From the first of the month, we were back to using candles. Autumn was coming creeping in and despite my vigilance it kept springing its unsettling little surprises: the dawn later and dusk earlier, the air colder and flowers gone. It seemed reproachful, to me, as if in its view we’d got beyond ourselves and had forgotten its existence so that it had to make itself felt.

  Then, mid-September, something happened to change everything, to knock our little world akilter, and never again were we the Seymours that we’d been, generations of us dependable and respectable. Had the messenger not ridden up on that afternoon or any other, would we still all be there? All of us, at Wolf Hall, just older, ever older, with our children. Margie and Antony, even, with children. That unlived life taunts me like a tatter of dream. How would it have been, to have lived it? The life I was born to, my birthright, my Wolf Hall country life. Well, this much is certain: if I’d lived it, I’d be smaller and safer but I’d be no one I know.

  FRUIT MOON

  1

  For me, it all began with a turn from the sink to find Katherine with her arms emphatically folded and a pointedness in her stance, even a petulance, which was something that, until then, I’d never seen from her. We’d been preserving apples that afternoon, and when she’d nipped from the kitchen to see my mother about our dwindling supply of cloves, I’d taken a bowl of dirty water outside to tip away into the sink. And then there I was, intending to get back to those apples but coming slap-bang up against her. She had news for me, apparently, but just as clear, to judge from the hard-folded arms and compressed lips, was that for some reason she was going to keep it from me until I asked for it.