Betrayed, Betrothed and Bedded

‘Well,’ said her mother, ‘I’m pleased to know you like her. So what does Sir Walter think about all this? Is he—?’

‘Oh! I almost forgot. I have a letter for you. Wait, Mother, I’ll go up and get it from my pouch. He’ll tell you what’s happening, I expect.’

With a space cleared on the table before her, Lady Agnes smoothed the parchment out, adjusted a pair of fragile spectacles on her nose and frowned at the words underlined by her moving finger, words she had clearly not expected. In summer, perhaps, but not in February. ‘He’s bringing the king,’ she murmured. ‘Again. Oh, my lord!’

‘Where? Here? Why could he not have told me himself?’

‘For two nights, for some hawking. With a few friends, before the court moves to Whitehall.’

‘With the queen? Does Queen Anna come, too?’

‘Er...no, dear. Not the queen.’

‘Hah!’ said the lady who’d spoken before. ‘What’s that all about, then? Not hawking, you can be sure of that.’

‘Hush, Joan,’ said Lady Agnes. ‘You’ve said enough already to land you in the Tower. He’s bringing with him...a husband...for our daughter Virginia.’ Her finger moved on, then reversed its direction, Lady Agnes repeating, ‘...a husband...for...Virginia.’

‘I don’t want a husband, thank you, Mother,’ Ginny said firmly, ‘and I certainly don’t want one of the king’s choosing. Send a message back. Thank you, but no.’

Lady Agnes pushed the finger farther along while her two ladies, one useful for her wisdom, the other for her energy, leaned in to read the astonishing words in silence. ‘One of his gentlemen of the bedchamber, no less. Oh, Ginny! That’s a great honour. One of his own personal friends.’

‘Oh, good gracious, Mother! One of that crowd. I’d rather...’ The words of denial froze on her lips as the picture formed in her mind of yesterday’s little scene in the stable yard at Hampton Court Palace when a certain gentleman of the king’s bedchamber had appeared at her father’s side for no very good reason. At least, that was how it had seemed. What had he been doing there? ‘Who, Mother? Does Father say who it is? And does he say why the king is involving himself in my future?’ Unconsciously, a hand crept up to rest over her heart, pulsing to the heavy thud beneath her stiffly boned bodice.

‘Yes. He says the king regards you highly for your comeliness and charm, and for your assistance to Her Grace the queen, and...’

‘Oh, I don’t mean all that flummery, Mother. I’ve done no more than anyone else would have. Who does he propose as a husband and what’s the deal? I’ve learned enough in my short time at court to know he doesn’t give something for nothing and certainly not to a woman. Who is it?’

Lady Agnes sat back, clearly taken by surprise, her pale eyes staring about her in bewilderment. ‘He’s bringing our neighbour, Sir Jon Raemon,’ she said. ‘He thinks the match would be to both your advantages and Sir Jon has already expressed a willingness for it. Well, what d’ye think of that?’

What did she think? Disbelief. Shock. Rebellion. Elation. Numbness.

‘I’ll tell you what I think of that, Mother,’ Ginny said. ‘I think the king has perhaps not been made aware of Sir Jon’s rejection of the very same proposal that Father made to him only a few years ago. So to say that Sir Jon is willing must be utter nonsense when he’s barely looked my way in four weeks of living under the same roofs. And anyway, I’m not willing. Can’t stand the man.’

‘Because of what happened when you were still a lass?’ Lady Agnes said, placing a dish of nuts on one corner of the letter. ‘Oh, come now, Ginny. That’s all water under the bridge. It was politics. Nothing personal. Your father and he did not fall out about it, so why should you? You know how these things go. A man has to choose carefully who he marries and for what purpose, and the first Lady Raemon brought him far more wealth than you could ever have done, even though Sir Walter’s offer was very generous.’

‘Which suggests,’ said Mistress Joan, ‘that the king has made him an even more generous offer that he cannot refuse and that there might also be something in it for Sir Walter. Sir Jon is now a widower and he needs an heir. Sir Walter is ready for a step up in the world and Virginia deserves a reward for her duty to the queen.’

Ginny’s tone was bitingly sarcastic. ‘Thank you for putting it so simply, Mistress Joan. That seems to be the situation in a nutshell. If ever a woman felt more like a pawn on a chessboard, then I cannot imagine her humiliation. She’s supposed to be grateful for the reward of a husband she doesn’t want, just for doing her duty. The men, however, get their rewards, whatever they are, for falling in with the king’s wishes. There must be something here I’ve missed, but for the life of me I cannot see it, Mother.’ With a scrape of her stool through the rushes, Ginny stood up to go. ‘I’ll go up and change, if you’ll excuse me.’

‘Ginny, dear, I wish you’d see this differently. It’s an honour we cannot afford to refuse. You must know that.’

‘It’s an honour I can refuse quite easily,’ Ginny said. ‘There are plenty of marriageable women swarming around the court, waiting for Sir Jon to glance their way, and I’m not one of them.’

‘He’s so handsome,’ said the other lady coyly, thinking it might help.

‘Mistress Molly,’ said Ginny, scathingly, ‘they all are. The king surrounds himself with tall, good-looking, virile bucks who dance well, joust and hunt well, gamble more than they can afford, make conversation and music to keep him entertained. That’s what he pays them for. Even the new queen thinks them foolish beyond words.’

‘Does she have any English words yet?’ said Mistress Joan.

‘Indeed she does. She learns quickly. She’s a darling.’

Summoning the servants to clear away the dishes, Lady Agnes rose to her feet and folded the letter into her pouch. ‘Such short notice,’ she said. ‘I wish he’d have given me a week instead of two days. Joan, I want you to go and make a check on the best linen and order the fires to be lit in all the chambers. Molly, your duties will be in the stillroom today. We shall need a mountain of marchpane. Ginny, you come with me.’

Clenching her teeth against a retort that would do nothing to soften her mother’s determination, Ginny followed her up the wide oak staircase and along a panelled passageway where carved door frames displayed the very best workmanship and, by association, the money that had been poured into this building by Sir Walter. His efforts had been well worthwhile, for now the king himself felt it was good enough for a stay of two nights, to avail himself of the excellent hawking on the estate. Lady Agnes might have been uncomfortable with the short notice, but nothing could have given her greater satisfaction than to know that King Henry was to visit them twice in the same season and to favour the family with a connection Sir Walter had always been keen on. And it had been worth those years Ginny had spent away from home, not to mention the expense, while she had absorbed the attributes needed for a nobleman’s wife and the company of young aristocrats. Things were certainly looking up.

Ginny knew her own feelings on the matter to be irrelevant, however strongly she might try to present her case. Her mother’s subservience to her husband’s will was absolute. Whatever opinions she had about anything except the day-to-day running of the house, she had been well trained to bend and mould them to her husband’s, though even the housekeeping was not secure from his occasional criticism. So however clear-cut Ginny’s objections, she knew in her heart that her mother would say nothing to countermand her father’s wishes, nor could she expect either sympathy or tolerance from them in a matter that affected them so deeply. For any woman to harbour a preference about her future husband was laughable. Men could choose, women did not, unless they were the flighty kind who fluttered too near the flame of love and burnt their wings in the process, their reputations ruined. And worse.

‘Now, Ginny, dear,’ said Lady Agnes, imagining her daughter dressed for the great occasion, ‘let’s just take a look at the rose velvet and see if we can dress it up with my squirrel fur round the sleeves. Is that what the court is wearing nowadays? You of all people should know.’

Ginny went to sit in the large window recess overlooking the squared herb garden where a fine layer of snow etched the scene into tones of grey. Beyond the low hedge stood gnarled apple and pear trees in the orchard, the rose-covered bowers of summer now drooping and dormant, the stream frozen along its banks. In the cosy room behind her, her mother was trying to urge her into the next phase of her life by throwing gowns onto the silk counterpane to make a heap of colour as if there was nothing else more important to discuss. ‘Mother...wait,’ she said. ‘Can we not talk about this? Surely you cannot have forgotten the answer Sir Jon gave to Father when he offered him my hand? How he told Father he would give it his consideration and the next thing we knew he’d married that heiress? Did you not see how hurtful it was to me? Did you not think he could have been truthful from the beginning and said that his future was already decided? How can you agree to it so readily now, after that rebuff?’

Laying down an armful of green brocade, Lady Agnes shook her head at it, then came to sit beside Ginny on the cushioned window seat. Taking the folded letter from her pouch, she passed it to Ginny with the words, ‘Perhaps you’d better read it yourself. It won’t make any difference in the long run, but you have a right to know, I suppose.’

Ginny unfolded it and read her father’s efficient handwriting with sentences as free from sentiment as one might expect. ‘“The king has noticed our daughter...and feels a need of her company at this troubled time...wants her to be at court...but only within the safety of marriage, not as a maid...to preserve her good name...and to have a trustworthy mate already in the king’s employ so that he and she might serve the king as one...”’ Raising her head, she tried to read her mother’s eyes instead. ‘Serve the king as one?’ she said. ‘What on earth does he mean by that?’

Lady Agnes’s reply came rather hurriedly. ‘He means you to serve Queen Anna, too, dear, the way you have begun to do with her clothes and...well...whatever else it is that you do. So that you can be at court as a respectable married woman rather than a maid, which might set tongues wagging. And Sir Jon will continue to serve the king as he does now, so you need not be separated as husbands and wives often are when one is at court. A most convenient arrangement.’

‘Convenient for the king. Nothing to do with Sir Jon’s preferences, then? So he’s been commanded, has he? Just like me. To suit the king. To pander to his sudden need for my company at “this difficult time” and for that, I have to be married, do I? As if not being married would set tongues wagging, for some reason?’

‘It’s not a sudden need, is it, Ginny? You know it isn’t. The king saw you here late last year and spent quite some time with you. He made his liking for you quite obvious.’

‘Flirting, Mother. As I told you, he flirts with every maid who catches his eye. There’s Anne Basset and Kat Howard, the queen’s maids, and plenty of others who enjoy his attentions. It’s not just me. Really, it isn’t. So it’s no use you thinking I’m anything more to him than the others.’

‘He’s particularly asked for you. And he doesn’t arrange marriages to his special friends to every maid who catches his eye. This is a great honour.’

‘So you keep saying. Marriages are for families, are they not, rather than for individuals? So any woman who thinks it’s for her had better think again.’

‘Dynasties,’ said Lady Agnes, showing no sign of empathy with her daughter. ‘Don’t think your role is unimportant in all this. Men have to think further ahead than we do. Generations ahead. Sir Jon’s wife left him with an infant girl child, but he needs a son, and I know nothing about his reasons for the sudden decision to marry his heiress. Perhaps your father does, but he doesn’t discuss such matters with me. It’s not my business, except to commiserate when a mother dies in childbed.’

‘Well, perhaps he’d already got her pregnant when Father made his offer. Perhaps her parents insisted on a marriage. By the way the women at court flutter their eyelashes at him, it wouldn’t surprise me.’

‘You should not say such things. If they think him a good catch, that may be as much to do with the wealth he acquired at his marriage.’

‘Of which I obviously had so little to offer that I was not even worth looking at.’

Lady Agnes reached out both hands and took Ginny’s in her own, layering them for warmth. ‘Dear girl, that’s not so. If he’d been able, he’d have accepted your father’s offer without hesitation. You’d been away up north for over four years at the Nortons’ home, remember, and you came back all polished and womanly and well mannered and, best of all, a beauty. Father would have got you a place at court, but you didn’t want that, did you? That, and the business of marriage offers, were the few times he let you have your own way. But it cannot last, Ginny, dear.’

Ginny smiled. ‘Is it difficult being married to Father?’ she said.

‘No. As long as I fall in with all his wishes, it’s easy enough. If I ever want to go and let off steam, I go to see your sister Maeve, when she’s at home. She brings me back to reality faster than anyone.’ A gentle hand came up to rearrange Ginny’s long ash-blonde hair that fell like water over her shoulders. ‘So lovely,’ she whispered. ‘I am blessed with lovely daughters and handsome sons and a successful husband. And now I must send for Maeve and George to come over from Reedacre Manor while the king is here. You know how they love a good feast.’ Lady Agnes did not mention that her daughter Maeve had also once caught the king’s eye with her hair like pale golden honey. But Sir George Betterton had stepped in smartly, too smartly for the king’s timetable, made her pregnant and married her before Henry could deepen their friendship. It had not been thought a good idea to tell Ginny of the reasons for the hasty marriage, and the child’s earlier-than-expected arrival had caused little comment at home.

‘Still,’ Ginny said, ‘I don’t like the idea of being married to a man I despise simply so the king can have the pleasure of my company without it being thought he wishes to marry me. I admire Queen Anna. I want to make her happy and fulfilled, and for her to find out how to make him happy, too. Being on the receiving end of Henry’s attentions does not please me the way it does some of the other women. They see it as a way into his bed, but I don’t, and I would do nothing to hurt such a dear lady. I don’t want his silly notes and jewels. I want her to have them, not me.’

‘He sends you notes? And jewels? Show me.’

‘I’ve returned them. It makes no sense.’

‘It did to dear Jane Seymour. It got her the throne.’