Dear Heart, How Like You This

by Wendy J. Dunn

  As well as my sister, I also had a younger brother, Henry, the child my mother bore into the world as her own life was taken, whom I had left as but an infant when I departed from home. My infant brother died before I had a chance to grow to know or love him, thus being brought up with my cousin George seemed like gaining a brother in his stead. Perchance, even if Henry had lived, George would have taken his place in my heart. The friendship George and I shared comes only once in a fortunate lifetime.

  Aye. My cousins became easily and quickly the objects of my boyhood affections. They were also the people I enjoyed squabbling with. And, being children, we had many, many squabbles, but they all ended as they began—in friendship.

  Aye. ’Tis so easy to recall my cousins from those early years. Mary, all blonde and always pretty—even if often untidy. A gentle, sweet girl who seemed to never think deeply about anything too important, who grew into a woman easily persuaded and, just as easily, hurt and cast aside.

  George. My very good and dear friend George. Tousled hair, lanky, very freckled George, with the brightest blue eyes I have ever seen, always so completely loyal to those he loved. My cousin George was such an important part of my life.

  Then there was Anne. My sweet Anna. Anna, who sometimes seemed like a fairy child left in place of a mortal child. Forever darting here and there, as if a spell had been cast upon her; a spell that forbade her to stand still for more than a moment. Anne. Anna. My beloved. Reader, you must realise by now what I thought of her. For this present moment, I will speak no more of that.

  My cousins Anne and George possessed a special brother and sister relationship. Forever together in childhood as if God had meant them to be cast out into the world as twins and then decided otherwise. Both George and Anne were musical. In sooth, poetry and melody flowed through their veins as well as the usual red blood.

  Even when they were very small children, Anne would often write the lyrics to George’s musical compositions, while George would do the same for her creations. To me, it came as no surprise to learn that their last night upon this earth was spent composing sonnets for their much-loved lutes. From little children, I know they took to music, just like swans take to gliding upon lakes of crystal waters.

  Yea, George and Anne were more to one another than ordinary siblings, but it was evil and vicious of the King and his ministers to suggest that their relationship was ever incestuous. Rather, I say they were like two separate pieces of the same soul.

  We three—Anne, George, and I—always formed such a happy and contented trio. The three of us enjoyed playing with words and music, and would often have contests to see who could outdo the other two. Even as young children we were always completely honest with each other about our work. While we were growing up, Anne would constantly tell me, to my great delight, that she believed me to be a great poet.

  I can still see her to this day: pixie face, chin upon fist, sitting cross-legged on the thick, green grass looking at me frankly with those big, darkly hazel and delectable eyes. Eyes, seemingly, often taking over her entire face.

  “Tommy,” she would say in utter seriousness, “you do know how to write such lovely rhymes. Your poems are like keys opening doors inside of you. Some open the doors to your mind, while others are keys that open the secret doors to your heart.”

  I would laugh at her when she said things to me like this. Here she was, such a little girl, always trying to perceive things in a way that was beyond the reasoning of childhood, but which often appeared even beyond the reasoning of most adults.

  Like me, George and Anne loved poetry, and often tried their hand at composing verse. But music, as I have already mentioned, formed the major passion of their lives. George and Anne both seemed to live just to be able to sing and dance, especially so when the music and the dance were of their own invention and design.

  Many an afternoon, when we were children, we would gain permission from Father Stephen to escape from our ordinary lessons so to take our lutes to a tiny chamber in the castle that we regarded as our private music room. Often our good Father, who came to be our attentive and appreciative audience, joined us there. In this room we would sing, dance and play our lutes until our fingers were red and sore, and our voices hoarse, thus could sing no more that day.

  My sweet Anna possessed a lovely singing and speaking voice. Indeed, more than lovely, her voice simply enchanted. But, I tell you true, she was no witch, as the King would one day claim. I swear that on my eternal soul. There was true magic in our childhoods, but the magic came out of love, not evil.

  Yea, all in all, I know this time of our childhoods was an enchanting time. We three children—close in age and temperament—aided each other’s development, helping to form each other’s being and, just by being together, constantly enhanced and enriched each other’s life.

  Furthermore, we were blessed to spend these early years in an enchanting place. Hever. Just that one word will conjure up images in my mind of a small, moated castle. A castle set within tall, yew hedges, amidst green, lush meadows adorned with a thousand and one different flowers. Hever. Amber-coloured stone walls forming the background for climbing plants of all descriptions. Hever. A drawbridge that took me through a gateway—protected by four stone saints set high above in niches—and, once through the gateway, into a timbered courtyard. Even the large, latticed windows, set amongst the castle’s stone walls—windows that allowed me look out on the glorious, deer-rich woodlands and the picturesque meadows surrounding Hever—were to me, as a young boy, things of immense beauty. Yea, even though very tiny in comparison to many other manor houses, Hever appeared beautiful in every way, decorated within and without in the finest taste and with little care for cost.

  Aye, Hever: the magical kingdom of our childhoods.

  But Hever was more than just that. That one word conjures in my mind the image of a very young girl—bright-eyed, delicate-boned, with tendrils of ebony hair flowing loose—constantly running or skipping ahead of two lanky, growing boys, slowly taking their time getting to their destination whilst engaged in serious talk.

  Yea, I hear you say, I speak as if I was a child lost in love. I tell you soothly. I can mark the time and place when my childhood ended. I stood with George upon a barren shore, watching an English galleon become smaller and smaller and yet smaller in the distance—a galleon, ever so swift, leaving the port of Dover. A galleon taking within it a royal bride and a close-to-eight-year-old girl—my cousin, who—unknowingly, and so innocently—took with her such an irretrievable part of me. Though I did not realise it then, Anne had taken in her keeping my heart forever.

  I stood on that barren shore, with my feet astride upon those slippery rocks, shivering with violence in the cold. Aye—so cold my tears froze upon my face. I wondered then if it was possible to feel any worse than how I felt at that moment (never knowing that the day I did would be the day she went out of my life and world forever).

  I suppose there are many, many people who would deny a child of such tender years the ability to know of love. But I know otherwise. Eros’ arrows struck me early in my life: when I was a small boy of five and she was an even smaller girl of two, in a sun-drenched corridor where music hung in the air unheard.

  CONTENTS

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  Chapter 2

  “I have seen them gentle, tame and meek.”

  As I have already pointed out at the beginning of my story, I had been five, soon to be six, when my father sent me to Hever so to be educated with our much richer cousins. Anne was then two, the baby of the family but already the dominating personality in the nursery. George was nearly five and Mary his elder just by over a year.

  My uncle—still but a knight in those early days of our childhoods—was of the belief that children should begin their education at the earliest opportunity, thus at four, five and six, George, Mary and myself found ourselves busy with being tutored by Father Stephen. Mary, though, seemed always to me a very disinterested scholar, co
nstantly making use of her female sex as an excuse to avoid the library where our lessons usually began. The girls also had a French governess, Simonette. Left widowed, childless and with little protection in the city of Paris where she served in some lowly position at the French court, this young woman was discovered by Sir Thomas on one of his many trips abroad. Simonette was bilingual, having had an English mother, and obviously very well educated. So, in one of the few acts of kindness in his life, my uncle offered her the post of governess to his two daughters.

  This turned out to be an act of greater wisdom than he ever could have realised. Aunt Boleyn possessed little interest in the goings-on in the nursery. To me, she always seemed more concerned with the social manoeuvres taking place at court than the children who were her own flesh and blood. My aunt was a very beautiful woman, even when age took a firm grip on her. My father told me her beauty once caused the family considerable concern, when, newly wed to Uncle Boleyn, it had aroused the strong interest of a near-to-seventeen boy—a boy very soon to be Henry, King of England. But my aunt’s beauty only went as deeply as her skin. Elizabeth Boleyn was a shallow woman—a woman, in these times, who appeared only to be happy when she felt herself to be the centre of attention.

  I firmly believe that if it were not for the devotion Simonette gave to her charges, Anne and Mary would have grown up more wild and unmanageable than what they were. As it was, we all seemed—most of the time that is—to be fairly well civilised children.

  And then there was the other much loved personage from my past, Father Stephen, who was the household priest as well as our tutor. Grey haired with thick, bushy, dark eyebrows and a huge Roman nose, our priest may have had a body like a barrel, but his soul and mind were those of a Titan.

  Father Stephen’s first lessons to us were based around the poetry of Homer. How we all—Mary too would suddenly appear out of nowhere to join us—loved the tales of the Trojan wars. It seemed to us children—watching in immense fascination while our Priest and teacher practically acted out the story as he told it—that Father Stephen became more carried away and excited about the exploits of the Greek gods than he did about his own God.

  For certes, it was obvious to the four of us that Father Stephen loved everything to do with the Greeks, even more so if they were Greeks of ancient times. I suppose his love could have grown out of his personal experiences. Father Stephen would often tell us how, as a young priest, he had been sent by his order to an order of monks. Monks living their lives on a Greek island, cut off from the rest of civilisation. Father Stephen had been sent there to learn the Greek language, so that he could return home and help his brothers translate ancient Christian writings. Travelling to and from the monastery gave him an opportunity to see many, many wondrous things, the memories of which excited him—and through him us—to the end of his days.

  Thanks to Father Stephen’s inspired rendering of those wonderful ancient Greek poems, we all became devoted admirers of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Many times the three of us—George, Anna and I—sometimes persuading Mary and Simonette to join with us too, would act out the parts of those great and engrossing stories. During those afternoons when we acted out the Iliad, I well remember that Anne could never decide if she wanted to play the part of a man or a woman, though she did have a liking and portrayed very well the mad and vision-tormented Kassandra. My heart aches, remembering Anna, so innocent and happy, with her black hair flying loosely around face and shoulders, running hither and thither, clothed in a long, old piece of blue cloth, crying out, “Flee! Flee! Flee! The Greeks are coming! The Greeks are coming!”

  These tales of long ago fuelled my imagination, keeping it ablaze and eternally hungry for more fuel to feed this fire well and truly alight. Probably because of these stories I became more and more aware of what I truly wanted to accomplish in my life. Yea, even as a tiny boy, my greatest desire was to shape, when I reached manhood, a magnificent work such as Homer’s, and thus be remembered forever and a day. Aye—how high do aim the young!

  Our good priest was very much my mentor in my firm decision to take up the mantle of a bard. One day he and I talked about my longing to become a poet of note. Walking back together towards Hever Castle, Father Stephen said, “I’m not surprised to hear that you want to be a poet, Tom. You are always scribbling when you should be attending to your other studies. Indeed, you have a condition known in Latin as cacoethes di scribendi. My boy, can you remember your lessons and tell me what that means?”

  I thought hard for a moment before crying in triumph, “A mania for scribbling, Father!”

  “Yea, lad. That you have, that you have! Young Thomas, I am glad you desire to be a poet. Plato thought very highly of them—as do I. But do try to write good poetry, Tom. Nothing upsets my digestion more, my dear boy, than reading bad poetry!”

  I started to speed up my pace as his huge bulk began to descend expeditiously down the hill before us.

  “Father Stephen, what is good poetry?”

  “What questions you children ask me!” He paused to catch his rasping breath, and looked at me with a wide grin.

  “My boy,” the priest replied, beginning the descent once more, “I believe strongly that any worthwhile poetry will always strike a responsive chord in the person hearing it. Whether as if soft breaths on a standing-harp or a shiver running up and down your backbone. Perhaps, Tom,” he now said, looking straight at me as he stopped at the bottom of the hill to wait for me to catch up to him, “the poem could even be a compelling call—something you cannot avoid—calling you to some kind of action. Aye, my boy. There are poems that to me have been as if battle cries.

  “My lad, always remember this:” Father Stephen continued, as we walked side by side along the narrow lanes taking us back to the castle. “Plato’s overall message in his discussions regarding poetry is that true poetry, like music, comes from the evolved soul, and the evolvement of the soul depends entirely on the growth of a person’s inner being. Remember, Tom,” the Priest asked then, “how Jesus told us that ‘Man does not live by bread alone’ but requires spiritual nourishment to truly live?”

  “Yea, Father,” I said, trying hard to keep up with him, physically as well as intellectually.

  “Tom, also remember true poetry comes from what is inside of you, something that is drawn out from the deep springs of your very soul. Furthermore, I believe with all my heart that the composition of poetry is simply one of the many ways we have to be true children of God. The rendering of a true poem, my dear boy, is man doing as his God did when he created us.”

  Father Stephen stopped. All I seemed to hear was his loud breathing as he leant his body upon a huge oak tree. He looked up at the unclouded sky, smiling as if reflecting upon something truly beautiful yet also mysterious. His attention, just as quickly, returned to me.

  “I feel so strongly that while we are all bound to this earthly existence, ’tis necessary—no, no, more than that, Tom. My boy, ’tis essential we seek out ways to be creative, for creativity keeps alive our souls and keeps us in constant touch with God and the marvellous creation that we have all around us.”

  Whenever Father Stephen said something like this, I always knew to take three swift steps away from him. Our dear Priest tended, without warning, to fling out his arms as if he was attempting to embrace all the world around him, but what really would happen is the good Father tended to knock over anyone or anything standing in his way.

  *

  It struck me many times during my growing years that Father Stephen’s talents were such that he was capable of being many different things. Not long after reaching my eighth year, during a pause in one of our outside lessons when curiosity outweighed caution, I asked why he had become a priest. For a long time after my question, he just sat there, resting against one of his cherished oak trees, with his eyes half-shut, seemingly lost amongst almost forgotten memories. I thought my question would go unanswered, which was very unsettling—our priest was always one for
answers. But at length, he began to speak.

  “Why am I a priest? Why, Tom… I remember my mother… Yea, Tom, I remember my mother…”

  “Your mother?” I felt confused, unsure how this could be in any way an explanation.

  “Aye, my mother. Upon her, God bestowed so many, wonderful gifts. I was her firstborn. For the first years of my life, she and I were the only people in our world. My father was a merchant and had left us for the Continent shortly after my birth, so for the first years of my childhood there was no other child, no other person to intrude upon our idyll. Yea, my mother and I were very close and I was immensely proud to have this beautiful, poetic, and artistic human being as the woman who had bore me into the world. During those first years, she took such joy to be able to include me in the world she created through her imagination. A private world that only she and I shared; a truly ethereal world full of enriched sights and sounds.”

  Father Stephen became silent for a moment, and then looked at me with eyes that told me clearly that the memories haunted and tormented him still.

  “But at the end of the third year, my father returned. By the fourth year there was another child. And another at the end of the fifth. And another at the end of the sixth; after the birth of that baby, my mother lay dead. Gone forever from this world—all the beauty of my childhood buried deep, deep beneath the cold earth. I watched my mother during those last three years of her life, Tom.”

  Father Stephen paused and breathed deeply, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand, as if his head ached. He looked at me with his old, blue eyes, bleary and bloodshot. Yet it seemed to me that I could easily see within this elderly man a small boy—almost the same age as I was now—heartbroken, made suddenly alone, so full of sorrow. And the memory of having lost my own, dear mother made my eyes fill with tears—tears I now brushed away. Father Stephen looked abruptly away from me, and rubbed his hands together.