by Maeve Haran
I looked into his eyes, no longer sure if his repentance were a true one. ‘I do not see there is any need for that. Your conduct is between yourself and your Maker.’
‘Just so that I might include you in my prayers, mistress, and give thanks to you for my timely deliverance.’
‘The Lord God will know who I am.’
I gathered up the skirts of my humble dress and sped from the room, feeling his smiling eyes pursuing me, knowing that he was not the only one who must request the forgiveness of the Lord. My response to that embrace had not been that of an angel, avenging or otherwise.
In case he thought to come after me I ran down the great staircase, past a warren of rooms where men sat discussing the finer points of the law. By the time I reached the Great Hall, my shameful excitement had subsided and I began to feel nothing but righteous indignation. So caught up was I in this thought that I noticed not my father who had lately arrived to sup with the Lord Keeper.
‘Ann?’ The puzzlement in my father’s voice made me almost lose my footing.
‘Father? What brings you here all unannounced?’
‘I bring you good news. Why are you clad like a serving wench? Surely the Lord Keeper has enough servants without requesting your assistance?’
‘It is a long tale. What is the news you bring? Is it from Loseley or my sisters?’ Of a sudden I remembered how much I had been missing them.
‘All are well. My father and mother send you their good wishes.’
At this moment my father had a curious look about him, like a cockerel who knows he has one hen left, the best of all. ‘Ann, go up and change into proper clothes then come and join me in the gardens. I have brought someone with me who is anxious to meet you. His name is Richard Manners.’
Chapter 5
I HAD TO vouchsafe, Master Manners was not as I had imagined.
Bett’s new husband was so dull, and Margaret’s so dependable. Mary’s Nick, to be sure, had a spark about him, but it was this spark that seemed to lead him to the bowling alley and the cock fights and the bear baiting, and—worst of all—the gambling on all three that caused my sister so much distress.
The garden was a delightful place at any season, but now, in autumn, its colours were at their most glorious.
Against the glossy dark green of the overhanging ivy, the yellow leaves of a crab apple stood out in colourful contrast. Beyond them lay a great alley of beech trees, each one a glow of copper, and standing right in the middle of the alley, as if in a burnished arch, stood Master Richard Manners.
A garden was not his natural setting. He would, I suspected, have looked more at home in the saddle, or with a sword in his hand. Lively blue eyes shone from a strong-boned oval face, framed by ruddy brown hair which hung, shorter than is the fashion, to the length of his collar. And there was a startling addition: five or six strands of black silk hung from his ear to form a dramatic earring.
At first I almost laughed at so womanly an affectation. And yet there were no other signs of the Court gallant about him. I liked his clothes for they were fine without being too overlaid with gold or lacing. Above all, he had an air about him of decision. A man, I would say on first encounter, who got what he desired on this earth.
‘Mistress More,’ he bowed low, flinging back the cape of his doublet in a dramatic gesture, ‘I meet you at last.’
To my surprise I found myself curtseying in return when I had intended to be cold and distant.
‘How are you finding life in London? Does it please you after the peaceful fields of Surrey? And what think you of the Court? I hear you have already been presented to her Majesty.’
‘It is certainly different.’ Did I trust him enough to tell him of the scenes I had witnessed at the palace of Greenwich and speak my true mind about what I found there? Would he find the situations humorous or think my descriptions too close to treachery?
‘I found the Court a wild place.’
‘How so?’
‘So much rivalry and jockeying for position.’
‘And you yearn for a simpler life? There is much, I have found, to be said for the life of an English gentleman possessed of a reasonable estate, as I have in Leicestershire.’ He moved a little closer to me, while I picked up the seed of an oak tree and turned it in my hand. ‘But a gentleman needs a wife.’
I might like his looks and be pleasantly surprised that he was not a clod like Sir John, but this directness of purpose made me shy away.
‘I hear you are a distant relation of my stepmother Constance.’
He nodded, seeming to understand my change in direction. ‘Yes. My mother and she are cousins.’
I wanted to say, ‘Then your mother has my sympathy,’ but stayed my mouth. Perhaps, hard though it was to imagine, his mother liked her cousin.
‘How do you find my cousin Constance?’ he asked. ‘A fine woman, is she not?’ Master Manners was watching my face. A sudden smile spread across his. ‘Or do you agree with my mother that Cousin Constance could try the patience of a saint?’
I relaxed at that, liking his easy sense of humour, and the way he guessed, without being told, my feelings for my stepmother.
‘Are you a farmer, then, on your estate in Leicestershire?’ Leicestershire sounded so far away I could hardly imagine its geography. ‘I know not that county, I am sorry to say, never having left the gentle boundaries of the south.’
‘Oh, we northerners are tempestuous indeed. We live in caves and kill our meat each day with clubs.’
‘Indeed?’ I laughed at his teasing. ‘That would suit my brother, Robert. He loves nothing so much as killing God’s creatures. The more the better.’
‘I will have to invite him to join me. And you? What are the interests that hold the fancy of Mistress Ann More? Not the hunting field, I hazard?’
‘I like to ride, but not to hunt. A hart is too beauteous to kill.’
‘You disappoint me. I had heard from your stepmother of your fierce ungovernable nature. Exterminating rats was listed as your favourite occupation.’
I could not help but laugh. ‘Oh, I only kill rats during the season, you understand. To do so otherwise would be most unsporting.’
‘I am sure the rats at Loseley would be pleased to hear it.’
‘I enjoy reading also.’
‘Cousin Constance complains of Latin and Greek. She says your grandfather has mistaken you for a boy.’
The tone in which he said these words implied that he did not share this illusion and I found myself blushing, a habit I detest.
‘My grandfather is a very learned man. He looked for a pupil. I was more apt than the others. Perhaps you share the common notion that learning in women should not be encouraged? It makes us as cunning as foxes, so he maintains.’
Master Manners fixed his clever blue eyes on my face. ‘I have great admiration for the fox.’
To my surprise I saw my cousin Francis stride across the lawn towards us. I had not seen him since I came to London as he had remained at my aunt’s house in Pyrford, some few miles from Loseley.
‘Francis!’ I greeted him. If I had been alone I would have run the few yards between us and flung myself on him. Francis was more to me than my brother, since we had grown up together while my own brother lived with my father and my stepmother. ‘What a pleasure! When came you to London? Have you met Master Manners?’
Francis bowed. He was only a year older than I but seemed suddenly the gentleman. ‘I arrived from Pyrford this morning. I came to say that your aunt, my mother, requests your help with some task indoors.’
Master Manners smiled and bowed. ‘Her gain will be my loss, Mistress More.’
‘That fellow has some address,’ Francis whispered as he threaded his arm through mine. ‘He sounds almost like a Frenchman.’
‘Aye. He has a silvery tongue, but at least he is not a dull dog like Bett’s husband.’
‘Oho. So the suitor your father has selected is not so far from your taste after all?’
‘I said not that, Francis. Simply that he has a fluency and a certain wit.’
‘But wit is the quality you prize above all, Ann. I have heard you say so often.’
‘As long as it is coupled with a good heart and an honourable soul.’
‘You ask not much, cousin,’ Francis teased me.
‘Why does my aunt want me?’
‘She felt you had spent long enough with the well-named Master Manners. He must not be allowed to tire of your company. And I think she feared if you were alone for too great a while, Mistress Ann More might…’ He paused, searching for words.
‘Say aught that requires a brain?’
‘Ann, Ann. Outspoken as ever.’
‘And what of your own courtship, Francis, with Mistress Mary Hawtrey, heiress to the manor of Chequers in Buckinghamshire?’ I teased.
Francis sighed. ‘Well enough for a match decided for us when we were in our cradles. Mary is an amiable young woman.’
‘Yet there is no love between you?’
‘What hath love to do with marriage? You are too sweet on such things, Ann. One would believe you had buried yourself in bowers of green with shepherds trilling on flutes and swains plighting love all day at Loseley. Marriage is a business arrangement, as you well know. Love can be found elsewhere.’
‘And what if I like it not to be a business arrangement?’
‘Very likely you will have to make the best of it, knowing the temperament of your good father.’
I shrugged, conceding that on this Francis and I would not agree. I changed the subject to avoid quarrelling. ‘Tell me about Master Donne, is he as great a libertine as people say?’
‘Master Donne? My stepfather’s secretary? He writes clever verses, full of wit and paradox that are passed round the Inns of Court. They talk of love and witty seductions and are much prized, or so I’m told.’
‘Francis,’ I said, as brisk as if I ordered a batch of loaves, ‘I would like you to bring me some.’
‘Ann!’ Francis looked as if I had announced I was a secret Papist and believed not in the Thirty Nine Articles. ‘They are not for pure young gentlewomen.’
‘Good.’ I bit my lip and looked down demurely.
‘Ann, I cannot.’
‘Francis, I have done many things for you. I have lied when you were out with your roistering friends, and assured my aunt you were at your studies. I have brought you water when your head was raging after too much sack. I have even translated some of your Latin syllogisms which, as far as you understood them, could have been written in Ancient Greek.’
‘I know it. But…’
‘Francis, I will tell no one. Why should women be ever excluded from the mind of men?’
‘If it were only the mind…’ He sighed. ‘I will do my best. If I can lay my hands on them.’ We had reached the great door of York House. ‘Ann, I hope you dip not your fingers in the fire.’
At that I looked as stern as Athena wielding the scales of justice. ‘I am playing no game at all. From what I hear, Master Donne is a promiscuous and ungodly man.’
‘Ever the sort ladies like, then.’
‘Francis, cousin, give us more credit. Now I must seek out your mother. She is determined, if I am not to be one of the Queen’s ladies, that I have more lessons in the honourable art of housewifery.’
Francis choked with merriment. ‘My mother was never at home for time enough to learn such arts herself. Nor wished to for that matter.’
‘Ah, but she has servants to initiate me. Today, I believe, it is the secrets of the still room.’
‘Rather you than I.’
‘Yes. And that is why I need some unladylike diversion. Or I shall drown myself in a vat of lye and never be seen again.’
Francis laughed. ‘If I had not known you all my life, and what a trial you can be, I would wed you myself.’
‘Yes,’ I pushed him off, laughing, ‘we are lucky our parents have not fixed it up already. Cousins are nothing to them. Though your betrothed, Mary, is richer than I.’
‘Your portion is respectable. Enough to tempt some men.’
‘Then I hope I do not meet them!’
‘And what do you think tempts Master Manners? Does he need a new roof on his manor and your dowry is the very thing to provide it? Or is it the desire to tame you?’
‘Francis,’ I teased him, ‘such a worldly head on such young shoulders.’
‘Love, then? The root of all evil?’
‘I thought that was money.’
‘Money cannot touch love for the harm it does. Why do poets lament its deadly arrows, else?’
‘Francis, go!’ I shook my head as I sent him off and went to look for my aunt.
I realized I knew not where in this great labyrinth of a house, the still room lay. I found it, after much searching and some help from the usher of the ewery.
My aunt was there already, wearing a plain gown, busy adding water to a glass container which bubbled on a flame. She looked up and I thought she would ask me what I made of my suitor. But my aunt knew me too well.
‘Ann, welcome. We have useful work to do. Yesterday my lord husband wrenched his shoulder as he climbed from his horse. He has called for a poultice of flos unguentorum, the flower of ointments. Now let me see where I put the receipt.’
My aunt hunted around until the receipt fell out of Gerard’s Herbal, newly published by the Queen’s printer and causing much sensation with all its wondrous illustrations of healing herbs from belladonna to black henbane and heartmint. I wandered round the still room, intrigued in spite of myself. We had such a room at Loseley, indeed my grandmother was famous for her herbal cures, yet it was nothing compared to here. This was a marvellous place, with benches along three sides on which were ranged bottles in every size from jeroboams to tiny vials with stoppers, containing the most costly of the essences. Hanging above them, on wooden rails, were hundreds of different herbs, with still more preserved in bottles of distilled water.
The best thing about the room was the scent: faintly medicinal, yet overlaid with spice and the pungent whiff of herbs. Entering the room was at once comforting like unto breathing in the fumes of some healing posset.
Every lady who ran a large establishment, my grandmother had often told me, must know how to make the potions and medicines for her household. And for this I had to understand the basis of medical diagnosis, how God formed every one of us out of four humours—yellow bile, black bile, blood and phlegm—and when these humours became out of balance, then illness and pain surely followed.
‘Ah, here it is. Help me, Ann, if you please.’
I hastened to help, grateful she seemed to be overlooking my outburst over the Court, at least for the moment.
She read the receipt out aloud. ‘Flower of ointments: exceeding good against the pulling or swelling of the joints—just what we have need of—and to restore the balance of the humours. That will be excellent,’ she confided, ‘if it can remove a little of his black bile. The Lord Keeper is usually the calmest and fairest of men but this injury hath released all his bile and choler.’ She studied the receipt once more. ‘Now what need we? Rozin. Ann, you will find that on the shelves. Yellow wax, olibanum, turpentine, myrrh. The white wine we will have to find in the ewery. But what’s this?’ she tutted in impatience. ‘Half a pound of sheep’s suet? Ann, run along to the clerk of the kitchen and see if he has aught of that.’
But the clerk had none. No call for it in his cooking, he told me with much disdain, nasty peasant stuff.
‘Shame, shame,’ my aunt sighed, ‘I have no more liberty to go marketing today but I will take you to the Shambles tomorrow. Tonight we must prepare for a great banquet. Your father has some good news.’
I wondered what news my father might have that would warrant such a celebration. A hint of fear made my hands shake. Surely it could not be so soon to announce my betrothal?
My aunt stole a sudden look at me, but I continued modestly packing away the
poultice we had started to prepare.
I ran to my bedchamber, my thoughts jumbling in my head. Master Manners had more address than I expected but I hardly knew what manner of man he was. Whether he was kind, or Godfearing, or of a generous and loving nature? I thought back to the betrothals of my sisters, trying to remember how much choice they were given in the matter. Margaret and Bett had accepted my father’s decision without demur. Only Mary had fought to be allowed her Nick. And Nick, I recognized with sadness, had turned out to be a disappointment in my father’s eyes at least.
As the light began to dim Joan arrived with my candle. Smiling to herself she pulled the great curtains.
‘Stay your hand awhile, Joan, I will draw them myself. I love to watch the sunset sink over the river.’
‘Which gown will you wear, Mistress Ann?’
I surveyed the dresses I had brought with me from Loseley—paid for generously by my grandmother’s hens. I had worn them but little since for my visit to Court my aunt had made me wear my hated white dress as punishment for my stubborn nature. I picked up my favourite, in sarcenet, the colour of old gold, and held it against myself in the glass. Outside the last rays of the sun glowed through the great windows lighting up my russet hair.
‘This one.’
I washed my hands and face in rose water and stood for Joan to dress me. ‘No coif, thank you, Joan. I will have my hair loose tonight.’ She arranged my burnished curls about my ears with the horn comb.
‘And what jewels would you like, Mistress Ann?’ She held out the small coffer in which I stored my few items of jewellery.
I held up two necklaces, a thick golden chain from which hung six or seven jewelled stars, and a simple square cross embellished with four large garnets.
