The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  All that was expressly forbidden to the rest of us was any consultation with a fortune-teller. According to my mother, fortune-telling was ungodly – no one should presume to know God’s plans for us – and, in her opinion, the fair should lose its licence for its toleration of fortune-tellers. What, though, could’ve been done to stop them? They slipped through the crowds with their minders, careful not to seek custom but to let it come to them, which it did, in droves.

  None of us ever needed warning to avoid the cock-fighting and dog-fighting, nor any ale-fuelled people-fighting, but Antony was entranced at each and every fair by the mock-jousters. He’d stand by their enclosure, commentating ceaselessly, probably just for his own satisfaction but, behind him with my hands on his shoulders to counter his inching too close to the fray, to protect those fine-sprung little bones in my keeping, I’d feel obliged to fake some enthusiasm and muster an occasional response (‘Yes, Blue Knight’s definitely the fiercest, isn’t he?’). Antony should have been the one to have a life at court.

  Those meaty-faced, sinewy players, brandishing their mock shields of toothy lions, blotchy leopards, peacocks more like scarecrows: each of them had had a previous life, the brute strength they brought to their displays having been wielded on ploughing or woodcutting or butchering back before they’d taken to the road. Watching over Antony’s head, I’d find myself wondering who or what had made those men leave their towns or villages, and what or whom they’d left behind. Remembering them now has me wonder if they’re still there, at least some of them, working the annual cycle of villages. Is ‘Blue Knight’ somewhere, even now, roaring to terrify and thrill a crowd of little boys? Avid fan though Antony was, it was me who contributed to the cap when it was handed around, although on principle I always extracted what both he and I knew to be an empty promise that he’d repay me later with whatever he had left at the end of the day.

  Even as queen-in-waiting, I’m doubting that for me anything will ever equal the excitement of the Great Bedwyn fairs. Back then, my own particular fascination, and Dottie’s, too, was for the acrobats and jugglers who’d be performing everywhere we turned. Dottie had an alarming propensity to get herself selected from the onlookers to act as foil: standing stock still and aghast while an impressive array of objects was lobbed around her head. I loved how the performers’ ease and abandon was betrayed, if I looked hard enough, by a hard-focused eye, a sharp-bitten lip. For all their skill, every flip and every catch had a touch of luck at the heart of it, of course, and, just as soon as Dottie was out of peril, to my shame I’d never quite know if I was watching for those performers to catch or drop, land or fall. Margie, though, had no time for them, her admiration reserved for the toothpullers because there, she said, was real daring and they actually achieved something. Oh, Margie should be the one running this country, she’d be giving Cromwell a run for his money.

  The fair was where we squandered our savings. Antony and the girls went for rag dolls, yo-yos, little drums, and Harry and Thomas would sift through trays of birds’ hoods and bells. For me, the draw was the fabrics: stalls and stalls of them, more than we ever saw at Marlborough’s market and better priced. My mother and I would relish a thorough exploration of what was on offer, usually with Elizabeth in tow, and even she, hardly the seamstress, would end up buying because she could never resist a haggle and at some point her bluff would be called.

  All this was in the offing for Katherine at the St Luke’s Day fair that October – knives whirling around Dottie’s head, Elizabeth haplessly impoverishing herself – and as the day drew nearer my sister-in-law professed herself barely able to wait, busily concocting various plans for the two of us (‘Why don’t we . . .’ ‘Shall we . . .?’). But then, the very day before the trip, she broke the news that she wouldn’t be coming.

  The first I heard of it, I was hurrying along the screens passage, heading outside to give my cloak a brushing, when the door opened and in she came, hair damp-spangled and eyes sheened. Backing in to pull the door behind her, spinning free of her cloak, her breath heavy in her chill-clogged throat, she didn’t detect me, and, turning, jumped to find me there. Perhaps that was why I rushed to explain myself, raising my cloak and the brush and, indeed, my eyebrows: ‘Just getting ready for tomorrow.’

  At that, all the light in her own face vanished and it was my turn to be brought up sharp. ‘What?’ She noticed that in one hand she still held a stick, one of the dogs’, and, exasperated, busied herself re-opening the door and depositing it back outside. Speaking more to the stick and the door than to me, she said, ‘Actually, I don’t know if I’ll be coming.’

  What?! stood there, confounded. Because no one didn’t come to the fair. Well, no one except my father, but he didn’t really count and anyway someone had to stay with the dogs. And ’didn’t know’ if she’d be coming? What on earth did that mean? And why on earth wouldn’t she come? Didn’t she understand? Had I not managed to convey it? This would be one of our two biggest days of the year away from Wolf Hall; freedom for almost a whole day for the pair of us. She was forever saying that she needed to get out of this place: well, tomorrow was her big chance and, more to the point, there’d be sugar-drenched buns and back-flipping acrobats. Hadn’t I told her that? But I had told her that, and I knew full well that she’d understood me.

  So, what had changed? What was wrong? Was she ill again, building up to one of her headaches? She didn’t look ill, though, not at all. But perhaps that was it, it struck me, perhaps that was it, because just look at her there, standing along the passageway from me, so brightly lit by her own blood: was she expecting a baby? Was that it? Could she not risk a jolting cart ride, an exhausting day away from home? Perhaps she’d had her suspicions but, with the journey looming, the prospect of the long day away from home, was having to face up to it and make a decision. Was that it?

  A baby: my heart cleaved, half-soared, half-plummeted. A baby, boggle-eyed and floss-haired. A new Seymour. A new generation, no less. But, oh, the danger of it, too, for her: the mortal danger. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and feared I’d do both.

  Not that it was a surprise, of course, I reminded myself: this I’d been fully anticipating. Hadn’t I? Well, we all had, all of us at Wolf Hall. We’d been expecting exactly this, of course, from our newly-weds. Somehow, though (how?), I’d neglected to keep it in mind. Which had suited her fine, I realised. Because she’d never once mentioned babies to me. Never once. She’d needed at least someone at Wolf Hall not to be waiting on her pregnancy, and that someone, it seemed, had been me. I was easy company.

  What did it matter, though? What did it matter if before now she hadn’t confided in me – ‘Janey-jay, listen, I’m a little late this month’ – because here was the moment when she’d let me know and the silence on the subject of a baby would lay well and truly slain along the passage between us. What she was saying, though, was, ‘I don’t really need anything,’ as if the trip to the fair were nothing but a shopping expedition.

  No: no need for her to pretend to me. ‘Katherine,’ I asked, ‘are you – you know – all right?’

  Drawing her arms around herself as if it were in the passageway rather than in the garden where she felt the cold, she said, ‘I’m fine,’ affecting astonishment, even, that I’d asked. And again, ‘I’m fine,’ but this time with a note of objection. Worse, she reiterated, ‘It’s just that I don’t need anything.’

  I swallowed my impatience – why did she have to make everything so difficult? – in favour of playing her at her own game. She wanted to talk shopping? Well, I could do that. ‘You do,’ I reminded her, ‘need some ribbon.’ Because that, we’d discussed; she couldn’t deny it.

  She shrugged. Someone else, it seemed, could choose it for her.

  Well, I’d had enough, and changed tack to do my worst: ‘If you don’t come, my mother’ll wonder,’ and then there it was, just as I’d intended, a twitch of dread in Katherine’s eyes. I wasn’t particularly proud of having threa
tened her with my mother, the prospect of my mother’s painfully exaggerated carefulness around her, and her bated breath, but she’d asked for it. And, anyway, it’d worked. Or so I assumed, but actually she simply resorted to defiance, ‘Well, she has no cause to,’ before sweeping past me down the passage, discussion over.

  There I stood, ringing with what had been said but unable quite to hear it: what had just happened? Had we had a row? Why? What was it that was suddenly so important as to have her giving up a day with me at the fair? It never occurred to me ask who.

  The next day there she was in the courtyard, seated in one of the carts, ready to leave with the rest of us as if there’d never been a problem. She hadn’t explicitly denied she was expecting a baby, but she’d certainly implied as much and I was inclined to believe her; on that, I believed her. I was pretty sure, though, that there was something she was keeping from me.

  Three cartloads of us were going to the fair, with Harry, Thomas and Mr Wallensis accompanying us on horseback. Thomas was already under orders – my mother’s – to stay alongside us not solely on the journey there but also, crucially, on the way back, at dusk; and my father had cornered him, for once, to lay down the law, albeit in his typical manner, his dark eyes fur-soft. They were too far across the courtyard for me to hear most of what was being said but I did catch, from my father, the word ‘gadding’, at which Thomas affected supreme boredom to imply that his father understood pitifully little of his life. This only served to goad our father, as much as he was ever goaded, and so he was persisting. Ralph, our stable lad, stood at a respectful distance with Thomas’s increasingly jittery horse. The choice of horse was a battle already lost: Thomas hadn’t been dissuaded from favouring Zephyr over a more reliable steed.

  For once, everyone’s sympathy was with Zephyr: we were desperate to be off. We’d worked hard to be able to get away early. We’d eaten at nine prompt, before we’d cleared up at top speed, forming a line from table to scullery onto which the low-angled autumnal sunshine had poured the colours of the stained-glass windows, firing a glint of determination in Margie’s eyes and deepening Dottie’s flush of exertion.

  Our impressive teamwork had given Marcus a relatively easy morning of it and he was sitting opposite me in the cart with what was, for him, in his gentle way, something of an air of celebration. I always found myself self-conscious in close proximity to Marcus, which was ridiculous because no one at Wolf Hall was less assuming. Perhaps that was it, though: him so shy but me unable to help myself. It was his mouth that drew my eye, that extraordinarily, gloriously broad mouth of his. Squashed beside him was Moll, who’d donned her absolute best, as she did for every fair, which was never less than ill-advised, given the travelling and the muddiness of the fairground. Lil knew better, the only addition to her usual attire being a bandage on her finger, the result of some mishap in the kitchen.

  Moll’s cloak bore the spiral beaded brooch that my father had once given her for St Valentine’s Day, having drawn her name that year from the barrel. She wore it on every remotely special occasion and never stopped telling us that, ‘He has a good eye, does Mr Seymour,’ although she must have known that my mother chose for him all the gifts that he professed to give. Moll bristled whenever she said it, as if we were bound to dispute it: as if she alone could appreciate his fabled ‘eye’. For some years, it made for the only joke that Elizabeth and I ever shared: tipping our chins and hefting our non-existent bosoms as we recited it to each other, reducing it over time to a mere ‘Good eye’. Whenever my mother overheard or even got wind of what we were up to, she’d tick us off, reminding us – rightly, of course, in retrospect – that Moll didn’t have many treasures.

  At last my father relinquished Thomas, perhaps satisfied that he had finally listened or perhaps just given up on him, and came over to say goodbye. Dottie heralded him, so it was to her that he headed and she clambered across both of us to the edge of the cart, the closer to get to him, desperate to know from him, ‘Will you be all right here all alone?’

  Royally all right, was my guess: he and the dogs with the luxury of the house to themselves for the whole day. Placing his hand over hers, he assured her he’d be fine, and when she asked what he’d like bringing back, he told her to save her money for herself. ‘But thank you, sweetheart, for asking.’

  ‘Nothing?’ She was incredulous.

  I’d bring him back a couple of those buns; I always did.

  ‘I want for nothing,’ he twinkled at her, ‘I’m a lucky man.’

  Then those merry eyes turned to his daughter-in-law. ‘So, Katherine, ready for the delights of Great Bedwyn fair?’

  She looked unsure. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

  His smile broadened. ‘Well, Jane here, she’s an old hand.’

  And he was right about that, and I rather liked it; it went some way to soothe my smarting from her bid to ditch our trip. I knew a good thing, I told myself, even if she didn’t. Our cart jolted into motion and my father stepped back to wave us off.

  7

  As it happened, Katherine needed no help to enjoy the fair: as soon as her feet touched the ground, off she dashed into the crowds, leaving Antony and me to run behind her. We caught up with her at the baker’s stall, buying buns for us.

  ‘Here,’ she handed one to Antony, who dutifully proffered a coin, only for her to wave it away.

  ‘Mama says,’ he insisted, ’that if we want something, we should buy it ourselves.’

  Katherine laughed. ‘Well, Mama’s wrong.’

  Looking after Antony while my mother took the girls to choose themselves some fabrics was how Katherine and I earned time, later, to ourselves, and what I remember of our afternoon together among the tents and stalls is how brilliantly she haggled. Not combative and duplicitous like Elizabeth, she was full of cheek so good-natured that the traders, however wily or hard-hearted, couldn’t resist her, couldn’t go far enough for her; there was nothing that anyone wouldn’t do for her. I remember, too, amid the hurly-burly, the considerable ease between the two of us, as thoroughgoing as the blood in our skin. Shouldering ourselves into the crowd around a trickster with his cards, or craning to survey a trader’s wares, we could have been doing each other’s breathing. I forgot my suspicion that she was keeping something from me.

  Towards the end of the day, though, something happened to make me wonder. Not long before we were due to start the journey home, Katherine said, ‘I’m bursting,’ and, indicating a distant copse, ‘I’ll just pop over there.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘not there,’ because there, I knew, was best avoided.

  When she turned to me for the explanation, though, I was stumped. I didn’t know how to put it; nor even, quite, what it was that I’d be trying to put. What I knew about that copse was to avoid it: that was what mattered. Back in those days, if warned to avoid somewhere or something, I’d do so and not bother overly with the given reason; there was so much to avoid, in those days, and so many reasons, few of which ever stood up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, I tried to recall what I’d been told; it’d been Moll who’d said it: ‘It’s where people go.’

  Katherine frowned, understandably baffled. ‘People go?’ and of course then I heard how inadequate an explanation it was, heard that it was no explanation at all.

  People: ‘Villagers.’ Unable to recall Molly’s exact words, I put it into my own, ‘For romance,’ which was pretty much how I understood it: lads and lasses spending time alone together, strolling arm in arm among the trees and looking into each other’s eyes, perhaps exchanging kisses. ‘For romance and worse,’ I clarified, which I did suddenly recall was what Moll had said, and which I’d taken to be distinct from the kissing: gambling, probably, and fighting. The behaviour, like the consulting of fortune-tellers, of those who didn’t know better.

  But this only served to send Katherine off to see for herself what she shouldn’t, and at a comical pace, skirts a-swish and elbows indignantly angled, to make fun of her own naked curio
sity. Behind her went me, laughing at her audacity, at the absurdity of it, begging her to turn back even as I stumbled over hummocks of grass in the vain hope of acting as a restraining influence. She halted at the first trees, though, and I stopped calling, instead quickening my pace and risking my ankles on the rough ground to get to her, to be there, to see whatever it was that had her in its grip. As I drew level, she didn’t acknowledge me, didn’t relinquish whatever she held in her gaze, but reached for me, her hand clawing at my forearm, perhaps to pull me closer or perhaps to keep me at bay but in either case ineffective, because I stood where I wanted to stand, which was beside her.

  Everywhere among the trees ahead of us were couples, each having claimed a tree trunk against which to recline. So many people in that copse, yet such stillness: a purposeful stillness, though, as if it were a dance of a kind. The silence, too, intent, rather than the mere absence of sound. There was nothing to hear among those trees but the doleful, fractured fluting of a wood-pigeon. The kissing in which those lads and lasses indulged was unlike any I’d ever seen or imagined: no polite pecking, but instead protracted and energetic, and savoured. Up on the wall at St Mary’s Church was a painting of bodies entwined and falling into Hell, but the couples in the copse were nothing like those fornicators, nothing like those helpless, pitiful figures tumbling towards flames with their buttocks bared.

  Cloaks and caps were discarded among the trees, which was how I spotted Thomas: Thomas, capless; Thomas’s dark hair. ‘ Thomas,’ I gasped, and Katherine’s gaze snapped along mine to locate him. I was as much confounded by his abandoning the ale tent as his being ahead of us in the copse with a girl. A girl? Her hand was in that dark hair of his. ‘That’s, Lil,’ I breathed unnecessarily, no mistaking the white of a bandage around one of the fingers.