by Maeve Haran
‘Goodnight, niece. Remember, you are young and beauteous and you have a fine mind.’
‘A drawback, it seems, for aught I can tell. Unless I learn to hide it.’
‘Ahead lies your whole future, husband, babes, a fine house of your own to manage.’
‘I know, Aunt, and I thank you for your care and love of me.’
She opened her arms at that and I ran into them, my tears dampening the brocade of her gown, and felt the nearest thing to a mother’s love I was ever like to feel.
‘Francis will come with you to Loseley in the morning. He is journeying to our house at Pyrford to hunt the hart with your brother Robert.’
I smiled at the thought of seeing Robert, who shared the same Poynings’ looks as I did, unruly auburn hair and eyes the colour of the chestnut. My father had brought Robert up in his own image, yet my brother had a spirit and a zest that even my father had not managed entirely to quash.
I had half packed the few belongings I intended to take when I recalled the fate of Stephen and Hope, whom I had agreed to care for until Sarah recovered. Dared I take them with me to Loseley?
To foist two uninvited orphans upon my grandparents was just the kind of hoydenish and unthought-of behaviour Master Manners had charged me with.
I would do it.
I sent for Wat to get them word. They should be ready next morn by ten of the clock. How I would transport them I would consider before the morning.
London was swathed in thick darkness, like a cloak had been thrown over the city, save for the little pricks of light betokening link boys out with torches or lanterns, when I heard a gentle rap on my chamber door.
It was Wat. His face was wan with tiredness and I regretted that I had added to his burden of long hours, yet there was a spark of adventure in his eyes at his siblings’ unexpected treat.
‘When I tell them, mistress, they will be in high excitement. Will you be gone long from the city?’
‘As long as my father’s anger lasts. A week? A month? With my father’s tempests it is hard to foretell. Get to your pallet soon, Wat, and good night to you.’
I tried to sleep by reminding myself of the pleasure at seeing all at Loseley again, yet a sense of loss at what was to be left behind kept opening my eyes. Was it my aunt’s love I would regret leaving or Master Donne’s sharp wit? And yet, I reminded myself, though he might glimpse the mind and soul in me, he was not above wanting to mould them to his own desires. I thought then of the swords crossed when we met in the streets of London, or the words exchanged among the passageways of York House, and knew that I would miss exceeding much the cut and thrust of our new friendship.
Outside the bellman rang his bell and called, ‘Two of the clock and a fine clear night!’ His every cry reminded me how much I had come to love the city and how quiet it would be on the morrow with no sound but the sighing of the pines, and the lonely bark of the fox in the woods beyond our park.
I know not what time it was before I fell asleep, but it seemed not a moment before Mercy shook me awake with the news that the Lord Keeper, sorry for my untimely departure, had called for his coach to carry me to Surrey and that it stood waiting for me outside, with four fine grey horses.
I dressed with all haste, not waiting to break my fast, and threw a cloak over my travelling dress.
My heart beat as I wondered who would come to bid me farewell but, apart from my aunt and Mercy, only my lady Straven was assembled in the Great Hall.
‘Thank my uncle for his great kindness to me, Aunt.’ I kissed my aunt on her proffered cheek. ‘I shall travel to Loseley in fine style. Goodbye Lady Straven.’
Isabella Straven smiled her catlike smile. ‘Mistress More, I trust the country air will calm your restless spirits.’
I curtsied and said nothing lest my words would give too much away.
Wat, with his keen wit, had stowed the children discreetly in the coach and bid them sit still and be quiet.
‘Farewell, Mistress More, I hope your noble grandfather will permit me to visit you.’ Master Manners had slipped quietly from the hall and was making a low bow, so that his black hat brushed the very cobbles of the street.
‘I am sure he will, though we lead an extremely quiet life at Loseley.’
I could not help but glance round me yet there was no sign of Master Donne. So much for his vaunted interest in me. I supposed he had business of State with my uncle in the Chancery or at Whitehall. I wondered what it would be like to be a man, to have a part in politics, to consider important judgements even on war or peace. Greater considerations than saying farewell to one troublesome girl.
Master Manners watched me, his keen blue eyes missing nothing. ‘Is there aught you are expecting? Another person of whom you wish to take your leave?’
‘No, no,’ I lied. ‘I had hoped for the arrival of a bolt of cloth for my grandmother, that is all.’
He bowed again. ‘I would be honoured to bring it to you.’
Waving one last time to my aunt, I climbed into the coach and my uncle’s coachman cracked his whip to begin the jolting journey.
At that, little Hope could contain herself no more and climbed onto the seat to look out of the window.
‘God’s blood!’ I heard my lady Straven exclaim. ‘Is that a child in the coach with Mistress More?’
And my aunt replying in fainter accents, ‘My lady, I find where my niece is concerned it is wiser not to ask too many questions.’
Chapter 13
AS THE FAMILIAR grey stone of my family home appeared I knew that I had never returned to it with greater confusion. It had always been my haven and yet now I left London with a wrench. I had not visited it since the death of my sister and once again I felt her loss keenly. And this time I had other great concerns of my own. Was I giving my heart to one who would not treasure it but break it? Did becoming a woman always bring such pain?
‘Is this the place, mistress?’ whispered Hope, who had slept for most of the journey as if the coach were not the jolting, cold and uncomfortable conveyance it seemed to me, but the height of comfort and convenience, which to her perhaps it was.
I asked myself if the welcome I received, bringing two urchin children, would be as warm as I hoped. My grandfather, though not as narrow and settled in his ways as my father, was a busy man who yet valued his peace and quiet. And my grandmother might be as brave as Boadicea in her appearance yet she always did as my grandfather bid her in the end.
Thus it was that I told the children to be silent and sit quietly hidden in the coach while I laid the ground for their arrival.
‘Ann! Beloved grandchild!’ My grandfather William was the first to spy the coach and come out into the wide, sweeping pathway to greet it. I quickly opened the door, before the coachman had the chance to do it for me, thus revealing its occupants. ‘Without your presence, this place hath been quiet as the tomb.’ He clasped me fondly. ‘Your grandmother does nothing but carp—the food is too salty, the servants slothful, her leg pains her. And your sister Frances! That child is so often on her knees it astounds me the pew has not worn quite through. And her good works! She is up at dawn and on with her pattens even before the household rises, and out to the henhouse to fetch eggs for the poor which your grandmother has ever collected for herself. Lately she has begun to take the servants to task for not showing enough diligence in joining her. Your grandmother is at her wits’ end.’
‘Poor Frances, she will make some gentleman the ideal wife!’
‘Aye. And her servants’ life a misery! Let me look at you, child.’ He stared intently into my face. ‘Grieve you still for your sister?’
I hung my head. ‘It is like the soldier’s tale of losing a limb—how it hurts the more though it is there no longer. I cannot believe the world goes on, the seasons change, the sun comes up, when she is not here to see them.’
‘My own sweet Ann, I miss her also.’ He folded me into his embrace. Since I was a maid it had been the safest place in all the w
orld, to be within his arms.
And then he started back with shock, and I turned to find Hope, no longer able to contain her curiosity, had pulled back the curtain so that her small face was peering out. ‘Ann! Who is that child sitting in the coach?’
‘Ah.’ I breathed in deeply. ‘That is Hope, Grandfather, and her brother Stephen. I have undertaken, as a work ordained by God, to teach them their letters, that they may have a better start in life and can later find some gainful employment.’
My grandfather’s eyes narrowed and his voice lost some of its welcoming note. ‘What right have you to do such a thing, Ann? Have we not enough vagrants’ children of our own to deal with in the county?’
‘They are not vagrants! They have a sister who is for the moment ill. They will return to her when she has recovered her rude health.’
‘Surely the parish, not you, should be their guardian in such things.’
‘The parish would split them asunder and send them to different masters. There are so many children in London, Grandfather, whom no one cares for or wants even to feed or clothe. They are like vermin, plagues of locusts to be swatted away. These children have spirit and wit. They are as sponges of the sea, or flowers of the desert, eager for every mouthful of knowledge or learning. You, who love learning, would not turn them away, surely?’
‘Ann,’ his tone was harsher than I had looked for, and his smile had set like the sun, leaving sudden darkness, ‘there are ways and means in which the world works. The Mores have been given much—because they earned it. They were loyal and hard-working in their service to the Crown. Yet we come from a certain stock. And that stock is the base of England’s greatness. To try and raise the poor beyond their expectations will be like shaking the walls of the temple. Dangerous and foolhardy.’ He looked at the children, who peered fearfully out of the coach, hearing voices raised. ‘I am not content with this arrangement, and it was wrong in you to foist it upon me.’
I yearned for him to smile, as he often did after he had cause to discipline me, but this day there was none.
Brusque as a tax collector, he turned away. ‘You had best find somewhere amongst the servants’ chambers for these children until we arrange their return.’
‘Ann! Ann! You are come at last!’ My sister Frances came tripping out over the great stone threshold, holding up her heavy embroidered skirts to save them from the mud. Like all children we had worn such clothes, those of adults in miniature, since we were babes, but only Frances had relished it. Frances, my sister Mary often pronounced, was born a woman not a child. She looked in astonishment at Stephen and Hope. ‘But who are the ragged children in your company?’ She shied away as if they stank or were verminous, which, I suppose, they may have been.
‘Frances,’ I put my arm about her small waist, ‘you are a Godfearing girl, are you not?’
‘I would hope if my Saviour asked me to do his bidding I would not shirk it.’
‘Excellent. I believe Almighty God has bidden us to help these children come closer unto Him through knowledge.’
Frances looked at them with sudden zeal, as if a vision had bidden her to ease their path to godliness. ‘Then I will do my duty to help them.’
The great oaken front door was thrown open again for the arrival of my grandmother, with Prudence in her wake. My sister Frances, sensing she had been the unwilling victim of one of my unsuitable devices, was determined to have the last word. ‘Come, Grandmother,’ she smiled with saintly sweetness, ‘here is Ann come back from London—and still no sign of a husband!’
My grandmother, on sight of the two children, was near as angry as my grandfather. ‘Ann, Ann, we have enough mouths to feed in this great house already. Had you not thought that your goodness and generosity might bring hard work and inconvenience to others?’
I felt a little shame at this for there was truth in it.
‘You are right.’ I held out my hand to Hope, who clung to it desperately. ‘Perhaps my grandfather is right that they must return to London and their sister.’
My grandmother clapped her hands. ‘For now, at least we can feed and clothe them. Prudence take these brats off to the kitchens, and before he says there is naught for them, remind the clerk there remains both beef and venison in the pantry and a honey cake I had put aside to take to Goody Frobisher. Since she knows naught of it she is not like to miss the treat.’
Prudence looked as if she would protest but Hope, with an instinct born of hunger and self-preservation, held her hand out and it would have been a soul of iron that could have resisted taking it.
That night I shared my bed again with Frances, though I would have given all my earthly hopes and goods to share it once more with my sweet Bett.
Outside our window the silence was so deep it was as if a sudden fall of snow had surrounded us. I saw that, without remarking it, I had become accustomed to the nightly noises of a great city, and found I missed the sound of bells and raucous laughter as men tumbled out of the alehouse, the bellman calling the hour, the rumble of barrels on cobble, the clank of shop signs in the wind from the river and, yes, Master Donne’s cry of the costermonger. In the darkness I grinned at that.
‘What makes you smile so slyly?’ asked my sister who, it seemed, had amongst her other powers, that of seeing through night. ‘Mary says your Master Manners has not yet persuaded his father to offer the settlement for you that Father is asking.’
‘Frances,’ I corrected piously, ‘talk not so crudely as if I were some lump of beef to be haggled over in the Shambles marketplace.’
My sister turned and pulled up the covers.
‘We are all lumps of beef, sister, yet some of us are pure bred and worth the more. I hope my price is not so high as yours, that I moulder on the slab as you are doing.’
In the morning I broke my fast with my sister and grandmother, nursing a heavy heart. I knew Wat could not care for his brother and sister and without my help their future would be uncertain indeed. I found an unlikely ally in Frances, who announced that until they returned to London they could help with the hens. My grandmother might be too stubborn to admit it, she whispered, but keeping the management of the hens solely to herself was taking its toll.
As luck would have it, my grandfather was too busy with the business of the County to notice. He had passed many of his duties on to my father, such as muster commissioner in charge of raising reluctant men for the Irish war, yet he did what he could while my father sat in London at the Parliament.
‘None wishes to go to Ireland,’ he grumbled. ‘There is no chance of treasure or glory as in the Spanish ventures, only cold and hunger and the fear of death in a land of barbarous Papists.’
I wrapped up well, for though it was warm there had been a night-frost, and went to see how Hope fared with the hens. Being a Londoner born and bred, she might scream at the mere sight of them.
Yet there was a stillness about the child, born perhaps of lurking under tables and in shadows, never wishing to attract attention, that the hens took to. I prayed that she dropped no eggs, nor failed to lock up the henhouse so the fox came in and ravished all.
‘These hens are my friends also,’ I confided, holding out some corn for the silly straggle-legged bantam who was my grandmother’s best layer. ‘They have helped to pay for my grand London gowns.’
‘Come, Ann,’ my grandmother corrected me sternly. ‘If the child stays, she works. And where, may I ask in God’s name, is the boy got to?’
Stephen had been set to cleaning pewter with horse-tails from the garden by the clerk of the kitchen which he did silently and with enough diligence to satisfy the clerk, without so much that he would cause resentment to the scullion, who might fear his job being threatened by too obvious an industry. Stephen, I noted, had the same watchful look about him as the girl. I saw how he jumped when the usher of the ewery clanked down a great metal urn onto the stone of the kitchen floor.
Both children, it seemed, had a talent for survival, blending q
uietly in. Wat had been luckier, for Master Donne seemed to value his humour and amusing tongue.
No firm decision as to the children’s staying seemed to be made, yet the horses were sent back to London and the two allocated a place for taking their meals at the kitchen and scullery table next to Sampson Ashley, the coachman’s man, John Haite, groom of the stranger’s horse, Marfidy Snipt, deputy cook, and Soloman the bird catcher.
I kept my peace and helped in the house and still room. The following week my grandmother sent me off to the attic to hunt out some lost receipt for bisket bread, and there, under dust and spider’s webs, I came upon the hornbooks with which our grandfather had instructed us in our letters when we were little children.
These were just as I remembered them, with the lessons written on parchment tacked onto wooden paddles, an illustrated alphabet, a list of vowels and consonants, together with the first ten numbers and a copy of the Lord’s Prayer, which I had learned by rote as had every child in dame or petty school.
Each paddle, just as I recalled it, was fitted with a leather thong that we might tie it to our belts and not face caning for its loss.
My sister Frances, with her pious nature, had revelled in being taught her alphabet through scenes from Scripture with ‘A for Adam’s fall, B for Boaz, C for Christ crucified, D for the Deluge… J for Job who feels the rod, yet blesses God.’ The rest of us preferred Apple, Ball and Cat.
I carried them down together with the receipt and showed them to my grandmother, who laughed at their reappearance. She even made no objection when I asked to give the children some instruction.
So I filled my days at Loseley with playing teacher, being careful that they also did their tasks in the kitchen and the henhouse.
One morning, when the sun shone and the birds sang so loud we could no longer stay indoors, we walked from Loseley’s great park to the meadows beyond.
Stephen found a small brook and, as boys do, began to dam the stream. Hope chattered happily alone, whispering to imaginary friends and I, without knowing it, fell asleep in the long grass under a tree.
