The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  ‘What will you do, Edward?’ Faultless, that impression of concern for him, yet all too clear was the barb in it. ‘Will you take hold of me?’ And she surrendered her arms to him: offered them up, outstretched, into the space between the pair of them as if together they might like to consider that particular course of action.

  I couldn’t see Edward’s face, for which I was grateful and frustrated in equal measure. Firelight snapped along the golden thread of Katherine’s sleeves.

  Stop this, Katherine, before it’s too late. Yet I was willing her onwards, too.

  ‘Is that what you’ll do?’ Again, that unnerving politeness. ‘Is that how you’ll wrench me from our little boys and through that door?’

  A wink of the pearls on her hood at its doorwards tilt.

  From Edward, nothing.

  As my own heartbeat came stealing up on me, Thomas emerged guilessly from the screens passage; he’d been to the kitchen and, unknowingly, was blundering in on this. I didn’t dare look at him; I’d recognised his tread just as it had stopped dead. I was conscious of willing him, too, although as to what, exactly, I didn’t know: Do something. Stop this. Turn and run.

  Neither Katherine nor Edward acknowledged him. Katherine sighed in mock-sympathy for her husband’s predicament. ‘So, will you manhandle me? Or will someone have to do it for you?’ She was in danger but she knew it and defied it; her fury and daring were lethal but she was exulting in them. She could do anything, it seemed to me, and I couldn’t take my eyes from her. ‘Surely you have a plan, Edward; you always have a plan. And you do have to get me through that door, or’ – stupidly, I thought she’d veered to kiss him – ‘I stay.’

  Threat delivered, she withdrew into a triumphant fold of arms.

  Did she mean it, did she really mean it? Would she stay? Yes, she did mean it; her very life depended on it.

  ‘Not as my wife you don’t.’ Edward had taken up her tone, to all intents and purposes contemplative and reasonable, his circling of her just as deliberately casual. ‘And if you’re not my wife’ – a shrug, interesting question – ‘then who are you?’

  I longed to look to Thomas for some kind of support but didn’t dare, for fear that taking my eyes off the situation would risk its escalation. As if the weight of my gaze could hold it in check. Edward flung an arm to indicate the high table, a flourish that under any other circumstances would be an invitation: ‘Where’s your place?’

  That same tone, mimicking his wife’s, as if the question genuinely interested them both. ‘When my parents come back, will you be sitting up there alongside them?’

  Katherine’s lips tightened as if this were a cheap jibe to be endured, but Edward was right and she knew it. That table, stripped of its linen, stood there sleek and gleaming in readiness for we Seymours. It was impossible to imagine Katherine sitting up there among us as if nothing had happened.

  ‘No?’ Edward feigned mild disappointment. ‘Oh, well, I suppose you could sit down there somewhere’ – the arm in the direction of Thomas and me – ‘in the company of . . .’ take your pick ‘. . . Marcus or Ralph, perhaps. Or Lil.’

  He stepped into his own circle, closing in on her. ‘But I don’t know who’ll serve you.’ Stopping, he addressed the side of her head, or more specifically one of her ears. ‘I don’t know who’ll lay a place for you and bring you a trencher. Because which servant in this household would defy me?’

  He was right – no one. No one would dare, and never before nor since have I been as afraid of my brother as I was then: his complete confidence in his own power.

  ‘But,’ and he was on his way again, pacing, ‘you’re not one to let a little awkwardness bother you, are you? You could always go along to the kitchen and help yourself. Because you’re happy enough to do that, aren’t you: go around Wolf Hall helping yourself.’

  I didn’t quite know what he meant, but more puzzling was how she managed to stand there and take the nastiness of that tone. Myself, I was shaking close to collapse; I felt so feeble, I felt I should know what to do and hated that Edward should have me like this.

  ‘Because if something’s there for the taking,’ the shrug done this time with his mouth. ‘Take it.’

  Her composure snapped, and she whirled to him: ‘I am the mother of your sons!’

  He stepped back, expansive, as if to consider. ‘But that’s the problem, isn’t it.’ And back to the pacing. ‘After what’s gone on, I can’t be sure. And a husband needs to be sure of his wife, doesn’t he, when it comes to heirs.’

  His sidelong scrutiny suggested that her physical form alone might offer the required assurance. ‘Absolutely sure. No grounds for doubt. None. Which is why the penalty for a wife’s adultery is so harsh’ – hands up, seeking permission to qualify – ’should a husband pursue it. But me? Well, I could go to the king with this, of course, but in my opinion,’ my humble opinion, as if his reasonableness were a mere foible, ’the penalty is barbaric’

  I didn’t want to know, I really didn’t want to know, I didn’t understand any of it; all I wanted was for this to stop. A glance at Thomas revealed him to be as horrified and helpless as I was.

  ‘You could go to the kitchen,’ Edward resumed, as if none of that had just been said, ‘because if I were to discover you there, thieving, I could hardly set the dogs on you, could I. Because they know you.’ He spoke softly. ‘It’d confuse them. Which would be cruel.’

  Outraged, her eyes reddened, and Thomas spoke up: ‘Edward—’

  ‘Or you could hope that someone would take food up to your room for you. Jane might, if she felt she could get away with it.’ He didn’t look at me. ‘Or Thomas. So, you’d have food in your stomach, perhaps, but what about clothes on your back? You’re a good seamstress.’ He took her off guard with a touch to her sleeve, the lightest of touches, yet disconcertingly lingering. ‘So you could do a lot of patching.’

  It was at least as much for his own sake as Katherine’s that I was praying for him to stop, but I knew by then that none of us would be emerging unscathed.

  ‘You could darn and mend for years and years, I suppose, but eventually’ – he swooped, struck her gown hard with the back of his hand – ‘it’d fall into nothing.’

  Her panicked recoil had Thomas take a corresponding step forward. ‘Edward.’

  His reluctance was audible but all eyes turned to him and Edward’s in particular were expectant.

  It took him a moment but then he managed, ‘This isn’t right.’

  Edward laughed, he actually laughed. ‘Isn’t right}’ He seemed delighted. ‘You know what, Thomas? You’re going to have to spare me your wisdom on right and wrong.’

  Thomas closed his eyes, emphatically, wearily, and said so quietly that he could’ve been speaking to himself, ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’

  Then his hands were at his face and Edward was cradling one of his own. He’d hit Thomas and there’d been a scream – from Katherine or me, I didn’t know, but something like a scream, an intake of breath, a scream in reverse. Thomas lowered his hands to look disinterestedly at the blood on his fingers, some of which was dripping to the floor. There they were on the tiles: those bright droplets, a startling spatter. Edward turned on his heel and banged through the door to the stairs. Thomas’s gaze moved to me and he said, almost conversationally, ‘Stop crying.’

  I didn’t know I was, and didn’t know how to stop; jammed a fist at my mouth.

  Katherine was standing stock still as if it were she who’d been punched, but then suddenly she was away through the same door as Edward, although not, this time, it was clear, to follow him.

  ‘Stop crying, Jane,’ Thomas said again, almost kindly, before he, too, turned and left.

  12

  Not knowing what to do with myself nor where else to go, I retreated to chapel, the only place I could be reasonably sure of no one coming across me. Everywhere else at Wolf Hall was somebody’s or held something that someone would soon be wanting or needing, but
we Seymours didn’t go to chapel outside the hours of prayer and Father James was tutoring Antony in the long gallery.

  I don’t know how long I sat there like an animal in hiding in a hole – perhaps half an hour – before I became aware of something that came into focus as Ned crying upstairs. I was used to Ned crying, but never like that, never at length; he was an easily placated baby.

  Eventually, his distress drew me towards him, took me tip-toeing from chapel and upstairs to the foot of his parents’ staircase. If he was up there in their room, I reasoned, then presumably he was with one of them, but then why the incessant, frantic crying? My scalp prickled with unease. Listening hard into the clamour, I detected no adult voices. Whoever was up there with him was alone.

  Gingerly climbing the stairs, I discovered Edward sitting hunched on the top step with his back to the door. I stopped dead and we stared at each other, equally startled. He was crying and, even more incredibly, making no attempt to hide it. He sniffed fulsomely. ‘She has Johnny in there, too, I think.’

  I didn’t grasp it, and he had to explain, ‘She’s bolted the door.’

  I glanced over his head at the closed door as if it’d confirm its resistance. Practicalities: I had to establish what, exactly, was happening. ‘What’s she saying?’

  He shrugged, desolate: nothing.

  There was no time for that. ‘But you know she’s in there?’

  ‘The door’s bolted,’ he reiterated.

  Of course, that door could only be secured from the inside, there was no lock, only a bolt that was beyond Johnny’s reach.

  The noise from Ned was intolerable; we had to stop it. I blasted it with, ‘Katherine?’ and shot Edward an accusatory, ‘Is she all right?’ If I didn’t know precisely what I meant, in a way I did and so would he. But how could Katherine possibly be all right in there with that noise? What was happening?

  He didn’t reply, merely warned me, ‘She won’t answer.’

  Not to you, maybe. Stepping over him – what on earth did he think he was doing slumped there? – I hammered on the door, ‘Katherine?’ And to Edward, again, ‘Is she all right?’

  She’d better be, because if not, then neither were the boys. Certainly Ned had worked himself into a state, but Johnny’s silence, if he was there, was perhaps even more alarming. The commotion at the door only served to intensify Ned’s fury, now joined by a baleful wailing from Johnny, the very sound of dismay and disappointment, as if he’d been badly let down and I didn’t like that, I really didn’t like that. What on earth could it be that had him crying like that? But at least we knew for certain that he was in there. Why still nothing, though, from his mother? Her two little boys crying their hearts out, and nothing from her.

  ‘Katherine!’ An order, Open the door.

  And then I was having to yell soothing words at the top of my voice: ‘It’s all right, Johnny, sweetheart, we’re here, we’re here, now, and is Mummy there with you? Can you ask her to open the door for us?’

  I asked Edward, ‘What about the window?’ because I couldn’t think: in which direction did the room face, and did we have a long enough ladder? She’d shutter it, though, if she really did want to keep us out; if she hadn’t already done so, she’d do it when she heard someone coming. And, anyway, what use to us, really, was a window? Heavily leaded, with its tiny casement opening, although for the briefest moment I felt I had the strength to smash it, lead and all.

  Edward didn’t dignify the question with an answer; all he said was, ‘You’ll have to get her out,’ and it was a statement of fact.

  And he was right, I knew he was right. So I gave it a last go, gave it everything I had: ‘Katherine! Open this door!’

  Then, to Edward, ‘It’ll have to come off its hinges, go and get someone.’ The blacksmith, the locksmith, our steward, anyone.

  His look was one of disbelief – involve someone else? – which in turn dismayed me because surely that was nothing to what was in store if he persisted with his wife’s public disgracing.

  ‘NOW!’

  And he did it: scrambled to his feet and belted down the stairs.

  For several heartbeats, I did nothing at all, didn’t think, didn’t breathe, and then it just happened: the bolt growled and the door opened. Katherine was as pallid as if she’d just endured a blood-let. Stepping aside to admit me, she then bolted the door in my wake. The room was fetid. We stood face to face, but Ned’s roars might have been an insect trapped inside my ear and I couldn’t think what it was that only moments ago I’d been desperate to say.

  Both boys were on the bed, Johnny amid a scattering of his mother’s jewellery – Look, Johnny! Mummy’s treasure! – with which he was playing as if ordered at knife-point, and the baby propped on a pillow, presumably in the vain hope that a concession to a single physical comfort would compensate for the neglect of other, more pressing needs.

  With an air of defeat, Katherine said, ‘He wants feeding,’ as if I couldn’t hear it for myself.

  Yes, and changing, too.

  I made a move for him. ‘I’ll take him to Mrs Pluckrose.’

  ‘No.’ Her hand on my arm; her eyes, on mine, stark. ‘The boys stay here.’

  I was to fetch Mrs Pluckrose here? But, ‘He needs changing, too.’

  She glanced at him, and blustered, ‘Well . . .’ We can do that here.

  Well, yes, we could, but, Jesus, ‘It’ll be quicker to take him to Mrs Pluckrose,’ who was equipped.

  Her eyes were knuckle-hard and the words, although whispered, were drawn tight: ‘The boys stay with me.’

  But this was wasting time; I quite simply had to get him to Mrs Pluckrose. ‘Edward’ll be back,’ I warned her: back at her door, and all of us back where we’d started.

  Her flinch was confined to the surface of her eyes, releasing a couple of tears. Tethered to her distress, Johnny looked up, the fragile composure of his own face falling into a howl. I swooped on Ned, who didn’t see me coming; he was beside himself, everything heavenwards – face, limbs – and his tiny tongue like a clapper in a roaring bell.

  The day room was where I headed. I had no idea where Mrs Pluckrose was but Dottie was bound to be in the day room and she was a safe pair of hands. As it happened, she was already in the doorway, alerted by Ned’s shrieking and at the ready to receive him, and behind her was Margie, whom I told to go and find Edward, intercept him, insist that he keep away from his room for a while. I didn’t doubt she could do it.

  Back in his parents’ room, Johnny was in possession of his mother’s wallet of silks, and was gravely garlanding himself. Having opened the door for me, Katherine returned to him, sitting on the side of the bed, supervisory. He turned his big, serious eyes to me and I dredged up a smile that he didn’t return but acknowledged with a bashful deflection of his gaze. The strewing of the silks on the bed had me realise that the cushions were gone, and then I spotted them: they were in Katherine’s oak chest; the chest was open, packed.

  My heart sprang on guard. ‘Where are you going?’

  She didn’t answer the question, instead saying resolutely, ‘The boys are coming with me,’ and holding me hard in her gaze to keep me at bay, to warn me off: she’d permit no challenge.

  But, ‘Where?’

  Still no answer; a slight softening, though, a relenting, an appeal for me to listen to her silence and understand it.

  ‘Where, Katherine?’ But I did hear the lack of an answer for what it was: ‘The nunnery?’ and for one glorious moment I almost laughed, because it was absurd.

  It was ridiculous, some new silliness of hers: this packing up of belongings was no more than pique. She was calling Edward’s bluff, hoping to shame him; she was playing the martyr. Something like that: something equally self-pitying and pointless. And, ‘No,’ because I’d had enough, more than enough: it seemed to me that I’d suffered years of such wilfulness from her. I snatched the cushions and dumped them back onto the bed, thinking just in time to make a kind of presentation of
them to Johnny, ‘Here, sweetie, these are for you, to go with your jewels.’

  Not that he seemed alarmed, watching me just as his mother did, steady and regretful, in his case with a string of pearls draped over one hand like a rosary. Edward mustn’t catch wind of this, I knew, because what would he make of it? It was as good as an admission of guilt, couldn’t she see that? Margie would do her best to detain Edward but, formidable though she was in opposition, he’d be up at his door soon enough, and he shouldn’t know what his wife had been doing. As far as he knew, she was fighting him all the way. And she was: that was exactly what she was going to do. She’d stop this nonsense and she’d resolve whatever the problem was between them. I couldn’t do it for her; I’d backed her up when she’d asked, but I could only do so much. She herself was going to do it, and she was going to do it then and there, for her boys and for our family. On her own account, she could do as she damn well liked – I really didn’t care, at that point, if I never saw her again – but no way was she taking the rest of us down with her.

  ‘Unpack the chest,’ I told her, but what, I wondered, was the matter with her? Why that look? As if she were letting me say my piece; sitting it out, taking it honourably, like a shamed dog. ‘You did nothing wrong,’ I had to remind her. ‘Nothing actually happened.’

  ‘Jane,’ – breaking it to me – ‘I do have to go. The boys’ll come with me, but I do have to go. I can’t stay here.’

  What was wrong with her? This was so typical of her, I could have slapped her. ‘They were poems, Katherine.’

  A slow, sorrowful, slap-worthy shake of her head, her face rigid in mortification. ‘I do have to go,’ her eyes brimful of appeal: Don’t ask, please don’t ask, just accept it, just understand.

  What bizarre, self-glorifying notion had she concocted for herself?

  ‘Stop this,’ I endeavoured to kept my voice low, as if a hoarse, desperate whisper might be less alarming for Johnny. ‘Stop it.’

  She was intent on embracing her fate as she saw it, the fate of the wrongdoer, but she needed to be thinking of someone other than herself for a change. Anyone else, and she could do a lot worse than start with my father. My father had done nothing wrong: I didn’t know much, in life, but I definitely did know that. If she capitulated over the nunnery, how would that look for him? He’d had some kind words for his daughter-in-law, that was all, because he was a kind man, too kind; she’d been unhappy and he’d taken her under his wing, and if she’d dreamt of more, of a special place in his heart, then so what? Edward wouldn’t like her for it, but he could hardly make the case for a nunnery. It was she who was failing to understand: no one cared about her dreams.