I spent many months sifting through the smoke-ruined embers of Cynddylan’s hall to piece together a story for Heledd and Ffreur, a fiction of what might have been.
I hope you enjoy it.
An excerpt from
The Winchester Goose
The Wincestrian goose
Bred on the bank in time of popery
When Venus there maintain’d her mystery
(Ben Jonson – Underwoods 1692 folio)
Prologue – Joanie Toogood - Southwark Stews
Although she follows me, I can tell she wishes she wasn’t here. She lifts her skirts above the foulness of the alleyway and her feet slip in the mire, the hem of her gown all besmirched with mud. She is pale, glancing anxiously from side to side, her lips colourless as she shivers and sweats, and her hands are trembling as if she has the plague.
We pass my friend, Bertha, who is sitting on her threshold with her skirts hitched, airing her blue-veined legs. I wave ‘good day’ to her but she doesn’t respond for, just as she sees me, her man comes lurching round the corner, sozzled with drink although it is not yet noon. Every day he pisses all Bertha’s hard earned pennies up the wall.
As his wife sets her beefy fists squarely on her hips and lashes him with her tongue, the lady beside me whips her eyes from the raucous disaster of their marriage. She turns her head so fast that I glimpse her yellow hair tucked beneath the veil of her hood. “I cannot be responsible for the things you see here, my dear,” I say gently.
The way she averts her eye, raises her nose and flinches away from the stench of my world tells me a lot about her. She shies away from unpleasantness and would rather not see the half-naked starvelings peering from the shadows. Their hunger is an affront, their bare feet an insult, yet it was she who asked me to lead her here. It isn’t my fault if she doesn’t like what she finds.
We pass a stranger, a shady fellow up to no good. He melts away into the shadows, not wanting to be seen. When I stop suddenly, the lady does likewise and I point a finger along the route she is to take. “See there, past the midden where the pigs are rooting? It’s up that stairway behind the inn that you must go. The Cock’s Inn it’s called, my dear.”
She doesn’t see the joke. She is an innocent, kept ‘nice’ by her mother. My own mother did nothing to protect her daughters from the world, but she made sure we learned enough to follow where she led.
“Be careful on those rickety steps,” I call after her. “My room is the one right at the end.”
I wonder what she will make of the musty chamber, where one corner of the shingle leaks when the rain is blown in from the west. My sisters and I have grown accustomed to damp in that corner and catch the worst of the drips in a bowl, for water always comes in handy. Things’ve been a lot worse, mind, before our luck began to change. Once, the place was caked with grime and the blankets on our narrow bed were thin and moth-eaten, but I’ve a thicker counterpane now.
In winter the bitter blast still manages to find a way through the broken shutter but we do well enough and are grateful to have a room at all. It is better than a ditch and provides us what comfort it can. But my fine, pretty lady will not have seen anywhere like it before, of that I am certain.
“Go on up, my dear, that’s where you’ll find him.” I urge her onward, knowing Francis will have thrown off his cloak and be growing impatient. As I watch her sidling past the pigs, tiptoeing through the mire, I snort at her gullibility but then, as she places her foot on the lowest step, to my surprise I feel a twinge of conscience.
I bite my lower lip, wondering if I should call her back. What will she say to him? What would any woman say on finding her husband sprawled on a whore’s bed on a dull July morning?
But she is gone, already climbing gingerly up the unsteady stairs, her gloved hand reaching out to push open the chamber door. I hold my breath and listen for the rumpus that will follow for it promises to be as good as any bawdy play. Instead, I hear a scream so grisly that it turns my skin to gooseflesh. The hair stands up on my scalp and, for a few moments, I find I cannot move.
Then, all of a sudden, I am wrenching up my skirts to fly across the yard and scramble up the steps behind her. Just as I reach the top, she stumbles backwards across the threshold with her hands held to her face.
Her eyes are wide open, her mouth like an ugly scar as she gropes blindly at my arms, scrabbles at me, babbling nonsense. I am afraid of such madness and cannot bear to let her touch me.
Crossing myself in the old way, I wrench away from her clutching hands so violently that she loses her footing. Her ankle turns on the top step and I see her face open like a flower as she realises she is going to fall. Before I can stop her, she tumbles backwards, her body bouncing loosely from stair to stair.
I dare not look down and it takes a few moments for me to find the courage to peer at the bundle of fine linen and velvet that is sprawled in the mud. She is lying very still and her face is white, her eyes closed but I think I can just see her chest rising and falling. I don’t know whether to run and help her or venture indoors to see what trouble awaits me there.
There is no sound from within and I glance one more time at her prone body before, with my heart hammering like a drum, I hold my breath and push open the door.
Isabella – Bourne Manor – 1540
For a long time I thought I was the fairer of the two but as she grew, my sister Eve blossomed into such prettiness that I soon found myself cast into her shade. I am older than her by a year and a half, my hair is a shade darker, my skin less luminous and beside hers, my eyes lack vitality. If that wasn’t bad enough, her pretty looks are complimented by a charming wit and ready laughter. But whenever I am in company, I fumble in vain for something even passably entertaining to say.
One of my most unpleasant memories is of an aunt consoling my mother by saying that plainer girls make better housewives. I have no inclination to be a housewife. I want a place at court, as lady-in-waiting to the Queen, where I might have the chance of catching a suitor rich enough to employ a housekeeper and a string of household servants. Our family may be of the middling sort now, but our bloodline is unparalleled. In the privacy of our parlour I have heard my father say more than once that our lineage is superior to that of the King, and it is common knowledge that if my grandfather had only sided with Lancaster at Bosworth, instead of York, then our dynasty might still be riding high. As it is, we creep and scramble a wearisome way back up the ladder of fortune.
You may think from my words that bitterness mars the love I bear my sister, but she is too loveable to dislike. I may wish I were the favourite daughter instead of a foil for her beauty, but I love her all the same. She is the other half of me, the better half, and sometimes I think she is the cleverer half also. She certainly seems to get what she wants.
I can hear her laughter now, bubbling along the corridor, her footsteps skittering lightly on the slate floor. She bursts into the room, her skirts sweeping the rushes, her cap slipping from her hair.
“There you are, Isabella. Did you hear the news, the wonderful news?”
I put down my needle, her happiness lifting my spirits long before I glean its cause.
“No, what news is this?”
She grasps my wrists and pulls me to my feet, spinning me round, forcing me to join her in a dizzy dance.
“We are summoned to court, you and I. We are to go together to meet the new Queen. I know she will invite us to join her household, I just know it.”
There is a small twinge of disappointment that, as the elder sister, I will not be going to court alone. Without Eve beside me I may have managed to shine a little brighter, but I push the bitterness away and return her joy, squeeze her hands and join her in a merry jig.
We are still turning in joyous circles when a footstep sounds on the threshold and we look up to find our mother watching us. As serene as always, she glides into the solar and takes her place at the hearth, her hair carefully covered with a cap, her hand
s folded neatly before her, perfectly poised, perfectly elegant. “I see you have heard the tidings.”
Ignoring etiquette, Eve launches herself into her lap and I watch a little enviously as Mother’s hands slide about my sister’s waist. Eve is as irresistible as a spoonful of golden honey.
“Will we have new gowns?”
“Oh yes, and shoes and sleeves. You must both do us proud, the Bournes are as good as any family at court. But remember, both of you, modesty is a woman’s greatest virtue and once lost it can never be regained, so guard your honour above all things.”
I stand a little apart, a flush upon my cheek, wondering if I should ever be given the heady choice of behaving immodestly. I’ve barely spoken to a man outside the sphere of our family. While Eve launches into a discussion of the latest dances and the best place to purchase a velvet coif, I wander to the casement and look out across the courtyard gardens and let her chatter dwindle away.
A little later, when Father and our young brother, Tom, join us I notice straight away that he is unusually quiet. I know that he would like to keep us forever babies and worries about Eve and I leaving the security of Bourne Manor. Even here in the countryside we have heard tales about the goings on at the Royal court.
Father no longer attends the King, not if he can help it. Since Queen Anne’s beheading he has managed to remain safely at home, reading the Scriptures, praying for religious peace, trying to be impartial in a world that forces a man to choose between God and his King.
Father believes that for all her brittle ways Queen Anne did not deserve to die, and he refuses to give credence to the lies that were spread about her.
The men accused alongside her were his friends and, once or twice, he even talked with the Queen herself on liturgical matters. To him, her sharp intelligence was of more importance than her beauty or her quick, ready laughter and he believes that, given the chance, she would have made a good consort for Henry.
Of course, a favoured Queen championing the Lutheran cause would have served my father and his friends well, but it was not to be. Once she lost the King’s interest, her influence waned too and when his eye fell upon another she was killed for no greater crime than failing to provide the country with an heir. Although we could not show it, my family were sorry at her death and her rapid replacement with the King’s favourite was like salt rubbed into a sore place.
No one expected Jane Seymour to keep the King entranced for very long and everyone acknowledges her childbed death to be a happier way for a Queen to die than on the scaffold. Now people talk of Queen Jane as if she were some wondrous phoenix who sacrificed herself in giving life to the Tudor prince. But Father, and I suspect others like him, see her as just another sad little pawn in the rich game of Kings.
Father says King Henry is surrounded by ingratiating, self-seeking fools, and those who adhere to the old ways try to oust those who champion the new. Thus the power at the King’s court tips back and forth like a child’s see-saw with Henry in the middle, the pivot upon which they all swing. As one side rises, so the other falls. We all know the danger.
“You must not fall foul of King Henry,” Father tells me. “It is best that you try to be invisible and not attract his attention.” He glances from my plain, attentive face to where Eve is stitching at the fireside, her forehead painted with the flame’s rosy glow. “And keep your sister invisible too,” he adds sadly, although we both know that Eve’s vitality draws all men’s eyes, wherever she goes.
It will not be easy to keep her safe.
For the next few weeks I feel as if I am spinning on a great wheel, for each day passes so quickly I can scarce catch my breath. But then suddenly the wheel stops, and I am no longer engaged in trimming frocks and sewing petticoats. Instead, I am dazed to find myself sinking into a curtsey before King Henry and his new Queen. Eve is crouched beside me. I can hear her short, excited breath as her corset stabs into her belly, just as mine is doing.
We remain prostrate, waiting for the invitation to rise; our skirts are spread around us, our heads meekly lowered. I hear the King’s impatient sigh and suspect he is bored, itching to hunt or dine. When the Queen speaks, her voice is so guttural that I do not at first recognise the sound as conversation. She has to repeat her request and I realise she is bidding us to rise.
Diminished by the astonishing figure of our King, Queen Anna, lately arrived in England from Cleves, smiles down upon us. She is as unlike the other women of the court as can be. Her clothes are heavy, covering every part of her flesh and leaving only her face and hands visible. Beside the light gowns and snowy bosoms of the court ladies she appears drab and matronly, even to me. My eyes sweep over her, taking in her plain face and the strange clothes that seem to encase her as if she were a parcel never, ever to be unwrapped. Not even by a King.
When I tear my gaze from her clothes my spirits lift a little, for her cheeks are dimpling in welcome and her eyes are twinkling, full of kindness. With a rush of relief I know I have nothing to fear, not from this Queen, and I return her smiles in full measure.
The other women, as bright as butterflies about a fat moth, titter behind their hands as the Queen beckons us forward and begins to force her hesitant tongue around our unfamiliar language. I suddenly wish that I knew a few words of German, that I might put her at her ease. I can imagine how friendless she must feel in this foreign country, this alien court and this huge, draughty palace. With great daring I open my mouth, venturing to speak and willing her to recognise me a potential friend but, as usual, Eve forestalls me.
She takes a step forward, oblivious to the indrawn breaths of outrage from the other ladies. “Oh, Your Majesty,” Eve says boldly, “what a pretty thing.”
I glance at the King, who narrows his eyes as he assesses the exchange between them, assesses Eve who is supposed to have remained invisible. Queen Anna blinks at my sister for a moment, and then puts a hand to her neck and clasps the jewelled cross that Eve has admired. Her cheeks are redder than they were before and when she speaks her voice is husky with emotion.
“Thank you. My mother gave it to me just before I left Düsseldorf.”
She blinks back tears and Eve, with a look of pure compassion, reaches out to cover the Queen’s hand with her own. The shocked intake of breath from the watching courtiers is louder this time but the friendship between Eve and the Queen is sealed, leaving me on the outside.
I soon come to realise how lucky I am to be an ordinary girl. For all the fine jewels and pomp, it is hard to be a Queen. There is no respite for Anna and each minute is filled with duty and spectacle, allowing no time for privacy.
Apart from Mother Loew and a handful of lesser women, Anna’s household has been sent home to Cleves to make way for English girls who, like us, are eager for advancement. Lady Rochford is there. I know my father’s opinions of her and let my eyes trail across her features, her indrawn mouth, her fleeting glance. She has served at court for a long time and has been a member of Henry’s Queens’ household since her youth. It was her time with Anne Boleyn that made Jane notorious, for the whole court was shocked when she so narrowly escaped the Tower herself by giving evidence against the Queen and her own husband, Queen Anne’s brother, Thomas Boleyn.
At home we were forbidden to speak of such things but gossip finds a way of reaching even the most protected ears. As I let my eyes trickle across her closed face, I wonder how she finds the strength of will to rise above the mutterings against her. How can a woman accuse her husband of intrigue, treason and incest and ever sleep at night again? I shudder with repulsion.
Anne Basset and Catherine Carey, who are standing beside Jane Rochford, see where my thoughts are wandering and wink at me. Eve and I played with them once or twice when we were children and I can tell, even before we are introduced, that very little has changed. They are both still vivaciously ambitious, vying with one another in both dress and manners. I flush a little and return their smile, wondering if our childhood friendship will be
resumed. I have never yet had the chance to behave like a young girl; perhaps in their company I can put aside my seriousness and grow more frivolous, more like Eve. Perhaps the young women here may even come to like me a little.
There is no peace for Queen Anna. Several times a day, ladies come to help her dress, maids fetch and carry, messengers come to and fro so that her rooms constantly buzz with attendants. When she prays, when she sleeps and even when she uses the close stool, a group of women remain on call should she have need of them. The only time she is ever to be left unattended is when the King chooses to visit. Then we must glide soundlessly from their presence. But so far, during my time with her, he has come not at all.
The gossips whisper that he came for the first few weeks but she does not please him, he finds her appearance repellent, the style of her clothes unattractive. Like most men he cannot see through the superficiality of her plain face to the warm, human heart that beats within.
Poor Anna, I wish I could help her. I know she is troubled by the conundrum of providing the King with an heir, but she confides in no one. It seems to me that the King does all he can to avoid her bed and, when for the third night in a row he does not attend her, Eve tries to offer her some comfort.
“Perhaps the King is ailing, Madam,” she says. “I expect his leg is troubling him again.”
The Queen, vulnerable in her high-necked nightgown, her thick red-brown braids hanging from her ears, assumes a cheerful expression and turns her attention to her yappy little dog. She takes him into her bed to sleep beside her upon the richly embroidered counterpane, but as I bend to pick up her soiled linen, the smile slides from her face and her eyes grow sombre again.
The Song of Heledd Page 19
