Portrait of an Unknown Woman

by Vanora Bennett

  Father was staring at me as if dumbfounded.

  There was a long silence.

  Then he cleared his throat and said, very quietly, “Is this true, John?”

  John raised a stricken face from my shoulder. There were tears on his cheeks. He was being unmasked as a deceiver without having realized he was one. He was trying to form words; none came.

  Father waited a moment or two more, watching him, letting the truth sink in.

  “I see,” he said, surprisingly gently. He put a hand on John’s shoulder, patted it, a gesture of comfort. “My dear John.”

  He turned to me. His face was inscrutable. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “You’ve set me free. If I have no duty to king or family, I can follow my own heart at last.” And then he was gone, into the dusk in the street, leaving me alone in the parlor with the husband whose secret I’d betrayed.

  I heard about what followed in Chelsea from Dame Alice, two days later.

  Father passed a restless night. The next morning, he said enigmatically over breakfast that if a man saw the things he should set his hand to sustaining decay through his fault and falling to ruin under him, then he should leave those things, draw himself aside, and serve God.

  “The next I saw of him was when he came back from town in the afternoon,” she said, shaking her head in bewilderment, her cheerful voice unusually hushed. “I was just leaving church when he walked in. He’d been to the king and resigned, but he didn’t know how to break the news.

  He’s spent so much of his life in public, playing a role, that he’s never really worked out how to be straightforward with his family, has he? So he didn’t tell me straight, just made one of his jokes. He had his cap in his hand and he bowed at me and said: ‘May it please your ladyship to come forth now my lord is gone.’ I guessed right away, of course,” and she broke into a reluctant chuckle at the last part of her story. “I’ve been around long enough to know he starts in with the jokes when he’s in trouble. I would have guessed even if Henry Pattinson hadn’t been there, and hadn’t understood too, and wasn’t dancing round in the aisle cackling, ‘Chancellor More is chancellor no more,’ like the fool he is.”

  John and I were summoned to Chelsea with the rest of the family on the second day. The king, it turned out, had responded to Father’s returning the seal of office with a formal little speech granting Father the right to spend the rest of his life preparing his soul in the service of God. That’s what Father had said he wanted. But Henry made his displeasure felt. There were no rewards for Father’s years of service. He left York Place empty-handed. We were called to the house in Chelsea for the practical purpose of reorganizing the family finances.

  John had spent two nights away from my bed, praying at St. Stephen’s by day, forgetting to come home to eat, slipping away from me with an animal’s quiet pain in his eyes without talking.

  I’d spent those long hours eaten up with remorse and horror at myself.

  I’d betrayed my husband’s secret, ripped apart his life, and for what? A cheap revenge on someone else. Now I was forced to stop and look at myself; I didn’t like what I saw. Was I less cruel than Father? Less stupidly unthinking than John? I didn’t think so. I was vengeful and intolerant; a monster.

  “I’d do anything to unsay what I said,” I wept, scrabbling at his door. “Anything. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I love you.”

  All my apologies and entreaties and contrition failed to touch John.

  “It’s all right,” he kept saying, though he stayed on the other side of the door. “I should have seen myself how important it was to tell him. I should have thought. It would have come out sooner or later. Don’t torment yourself.”

  He was kind, so much kinder than me, even in despair. But he didn’t mean it was all right. His voice was shattered. I could hear he was heartbroken.

  There’d been no answer either to my frantic note to Father, in which I’d found nothing better to say than “Father, I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t understand, I’m a foolish girl, please forgive me.”

  None of the others knew about the row at my house. The first person I saw when we got out of the boat at Chelsea, after a silent hour on the water, was Will Roper, Margaret’s husband, blond, red-eyed, floppy-haired, with tension lines on his pretty young face. He linked arms with both John and me as we walked up from the landing stage, a compromise between the poise he was trying to learn as a member of Parliament and his old puppyish ways. I didn’t mind. His presence filled the empty, shamed space between me and John.

  “He’s going to talk to us all at dinner. You must be very understanding,” Will whispered—everyone was whispering, we discovered when we reached the house, and everyone talking only about “him,” without bothering with Father’s name—“he’s being so brave. But he’s taking it hard. He’s even been talking about becoming a martyr; saying it would make him so happy if he could see that his wife and children would encourage him to die in a good cause that he would run merrily toward his death.”

  He shook his head, a sensible old head on young shoulders. “I can understand why he’d take it that way, of course,” he added doubtfully.

  They were all there at the table (except Elizabeth, of course; she was far away in Shropshire with her children, but William Dauncey, who’d been at Parliament, was at the end of the table with his face as foolish and chinless and his eyes as bright and watchful as I remembered). They all had reddish eyes and strained expressions.

  Even Cecily didn’t giggle; she just held tightly on to Giles Heron’s hand. And when young John—married to pretty Anne now but still living at home, since the times had been too troubled for Father to turn his head to carving out a career for his son—thought no one was looking, he kept putting a hand to his forehead to massage away his pain. I was briefly touched to see Anne, at his side, noticing his gesture and delving into her skirts to pull out a little cloth pouch for him—the vervain I’d taught her to treat him with. But there was no cheer among us. So John and I blended in; there was no need to explain our difficult silences.

  My heart was wrung by the way Father looked, sitting between Margaret and Dame Alice at the head of the table—going through the motions of being as full of charm and attention as ever. I’d been so angry with him for so long that I’d forgotten his admirable strength, the reserves of dignity and grace in public that he’d naturally draw on in dark times. He was nodding courteously to Margaret and asking her for stories about her children; he was passing food to Dame Alice before the page boys had time to reach for it. It was only when he raised his face to us that I could see the weariness of his expression and the emptiness in his eyes. At least, I thought, clutching at whatever comfort I could, he hadn’t flinched away from me in the way I’d secretly feared.

  Instead he stood up and came toward us both. “Welcome,” he said graciously, smiling warmly, taking us to our places. “My dear children. Thank you both for coming today.” Then he helped me settle on my seat and murmured, “Thank you for your note; you didn’t need to write it. You helped me take a decision I should probably have taken before. Sometimes it just takes one nudge more to understand the best way forward. I appreciate your honesty.”

  I felt his arm linger on my back as he turned to John and helped him tuck his long legs under the table. I heard another murmur in John’s ear, and when I looked round I saw that a few quiet words had been enough to make him too feel his guilt was absolved. Father went quietly back to his place. When, a moment later, a hand stretched under the table to take mine, I squeezed it back and, for the first time in two days, found John’s eyes on mine with a light in them that might, I hoped, mean forgiveness.

  The food was simple, even plainer than usual. There was no wine, just small beer and water, and no more than three or four dishes set at our table. Father cleared his throat to get our attention—it was easy enough, since everyone was giving him furtive glances the whole time and the table was all but silent—
and, after saying grace, said, as simply as he knew how, into our silence, “I think you all know that I’ve made a decision which means my income will no longer be what it was. I’ve gathered all my children together today—I consider all of you my children—to ask your advice about how we can go on living and being together.”

  I hadn’t thought about money for a moment, but it was true; we all received allowances from Father, and both the Wills spent half their week living at Chelsea. None of us knew how to respond. I looked at Margaret and saw her looking sidelong at Will Dauncey, who was looking at Will Roper, who was looking at John.

  Dame Alice, who I noticed was wearing a plain dark dress with none of the opulence she usually favored, was fidgeting with a piece of bread. Father looked around at our mournful faces with such a tender expression that it made me wonder, for a second, if he wasn’t genuinely secretly relieved at his change in circumstances.

  “Then let me share my thoughts with you,” he went on. “You needn’t worry: we aren’t going to have to go out and gather bracken for the fire.

  We just need to be more careful. Those who can will perhaps be good enough to contribute to the costs of the household. And we can all save by gradually learning to eat more modestly.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Will Dauncey push away the dish of meat by his elbow.

  “I plan to lead a quieter life in any case,” Father continued calmly, changing the subject. “I get pains in my chest sometimes; my doctors have been telling me for years to do less.”

  Will Dauncey saw his cue for courtly politeness. “May we ask what your plans are, sir?” he said, smiling and bowing his head.

  “I shall . . .”—Father paused, as if gathering his thoughts—“pray more, and write more . . . Carry the cross in procession at the parish church at Chelsea . . . and, I hope, see more of all of you.”

  And he smiled and bowed back at Will Dauncey with all the glowing warmth he was capable of.

  Margaret slipped away from the table early. I followed her to her room a few minutes later, knowing she’d be as relieved as me to talk. Knocking on the door, I slipped inside without waiting for an answer.

  “Who’s that?” she called, more sharply than I’d expected. She was by the fire, kneeling on the floor, scrubbing at a rag in a pink-stained bowl. “Oh, it’s you, Meg,” she said, hurriedly putting herself between the bowl and me.

  I looked away. “I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly, imagining it was the rag from her monthly bleeding and wondering why she hadn’t had a maid scrub it instead of doing it herself. “I should have waited at the door.”

  “It’s all right; I don’t mind you seeing,” she said, relaxing. “I used to do it for Father when we lived here. And I feel so helpless now—I wanted to do it just to have something to do to help. But don’t tell anyone else. It would embarrass him so.”

  I looked again. The scraps of wet cloth sticking out of the bowl were rough enough to scrape the skin: Father’s hair shirt. The sight of it made me want to cry. I found myself wishing I was gentle Margaret, and that it had been in my nature to willingly do Father this quiet domestic service for years to help him in his prayers, instead of myself, poking round his study when he wasn’t there and recoiling in horror from his scourge and furious writings. “Oh sweetheart,” I said, and we hugged, and found tears on our cheeks as we came apart that neither of us knew who had shed.

  “Do you think he’s really worried about money?” I asked when we were both sitting on the floor watching the flames.

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t think he cares. Will says the bishops wrote to him today with an offer to find a lot of money—four thousand pounds—to pay him for his defense of the clergy in Parliament.

  But he just laughed and said no. He told Will he’d rather they threw the money in the Thames. He said he looked for thanks to God, not bishops, and that he’d done his work for God’s sake, not theirs.”

  “Do you know what I think, Meg?” she went on. “I think he’s relieved. I think he wants to live as plainly as possible because he doesn’t have to do anything else anymore. He’s always wanted to devote himself to God. And now he’s free of the world, perhaps he can.”

  There was something so wistful in the look she fixed on me that I nodded my agreement. We would both have loved that idea to be true.

  But when I heard John’s footsteps on the stairs and followed him back to the room we’d been put in to share (he hadn’t objected, but I hadn’t known if he would end up sharing it with me; I was grateful to find us both in there), I couldn’t believe anymore that Father’s life would become simple. I stood with John at the window, watching the flickering light of Father’s candle as he went down the path to the New Building to start his long night of prayer and thought.

  “What do you think he’ll be doing in there tonight?” I asked cautiously, and was warmed when I felt John’s dry, warm hand on mine in the darkness. I was grateful that he wasn’t gloating, as I might have done to him if our positions had been reversed on this subdued, unhappy May night: telling me that I had only myself to blame and that I’d got what I wanted. “What do you think he’s thinking?”

  “The same as before,” John said, carefully avoiding letting into his voice any intonation suggesting blame. “Nothing’s changed. I asked him. He’s going to start another volume of arguments against Tyndale. It’s his passion, Meg; what matters most to him in life. He’s going to go on hunting heretics.”

  Into the silence that fell then, in the starless, moonless, blackness of that early summer night, I found my mind drifting back to the other confidence Margaret had shared with me. It was part of the rather shamefaced worry she’d started confessing to about whether Father’s hundreds of courtly friends would still want to know our family now.

  “I think we might get lonely,” Margaret had whispered. “I think all kinds of people will just stop calling—even the ones who owe Father everything. For instance . . . do you remember Master Hans, the painter?”

  I’d nodded, mystified.

  “Well, my maid says he’s back in London. She saw him wandering round Smithfield yesterday. But he’s staying at the Steelyard. I may be wrong, but I don’t think you or I will be seeing Master Hans again any time soon.”

  Part Four

  After the Ambassadors

  17

  Hans Holbein watched the rat’s tail whip against the drapes as Hit scuttled away from the candle’s light. The rooms were small and mean: bare boards on the floor, a rough table and bench and two chairs by the fire in the first room and a straw-filled pallet on the bedframe of the second room next to a wormy old chest. But that’s what you got in Maiden Lane. That’s why they let foreigners live around Cordwainers’ Hall. There was no point in complaining too much. The house came recommended by Davy, the sharp-eyed manager of the underground market in religious books and the Steelyard’s most trusted London friend.

  It was safe here, and near the Steelyard, even if you’d be lucky to get half an hour’s good light to draw by.

  “There’s no pot,” he said firmly.

  The old man nodded sadly.

  “There’s no carpet.”

  Another toothless, apologetic baring of gums.

  “There’s nothing to eat off.”

  “They broke, didn’t they,” the old man intoned. His voice was an irritating whine. There was a drip coming down from his nostrils, which he didn’t bother to wipe away. “No point in buying new ones, see, not when the end of the world is nigh.”

  Holbein laughed and put down his bundle. “Well, I still need to piss and eat until Judgment Day comes,” he said. “Don’t I?” he added, feeling secretly pleased that he was mastering the London idiom.

  The old man nodded reluctantly, though he brightened when Holbein put the warm coins he’d already counted out into the gnarly old hand and pursued the advantage by saying: “So you take that and go and get me what I need, and send your boy in every morning to clear up, an
d feed me when I’m home, and I don’t know how much that will be, and I’ll take your house for a year.”

  His gait as he scuttled out before Holbein could change his mind reminded the painter of the rat.

  Holbein thought: Amazing how quickly a few coins stopped all that droning about Judgment Day. Fourteen suicides in London in fourteen days. The two giant fish pulled out of the Thames. Allhallows Church in Bread Street closed and its two priests imprisoned after they came to blows at the altar and wounded each other so badly that blood sprayed onto the altar cloth. That was a lot of bad-luck stories for less than an hour; and a lot of lugubrious shaking of the head; and a lot of mean little flashes of the eyes with the lip-smacking commentary: “Bad times coming. Oh yes. And it’s no surprise to me. Fifteen hundred years next spring since the crucifixion and God’s angry enough to smite us for our sins. Smite us good and proper. No wonder, with the way things are going down here.”

  It could be worse to have to listen to that all the time than to have to live without a chamber pot or a dish and cup. Holbein could only hope that, once he was installed in the room and the money was coming in regularly, the old man would stop going on about the apocalypse and cheer up. He had enough problems of his own without the end of the world being nigh.

  But the old man didn’t calm down. Holbein could hear him from his room, muttering away to the rabbity, scared-looking young boy who did the work around the place. There was a new story every day, chewed over with a mixture of terror and gusto. The great red globe the brothers had seen suspended over the Charterhouse. The comets every night in the sky.

  The horse’s head on fire. The flaming sword. The blue cross above the moon. If they’d been orthodox believers they’d have crossed themselves in midmumble. But they didn’t cross themselves in this house. They thought it superstitious.