LIBERTINE in the Tudor Court: One Night in Paradise / A Most Unseemly Summer

She whispered in Adorna’s ear, ‘You didn’t tell me!’

‘Tell you what, Mother?’ Acting total innocence came quite easily to her.

‘That he was so handsome. And distinguished. If I’d understood that he was my lord of Leicester’s deputy, I’d have had him instead of Master Fowler partner you. Is Sir Nicholas the one who helped you out of the river?’

Adorna’s eyes strayed once more to the midnight-blue taffeta doublet, velvet breeches and black silk hose, to his elegant bearing, to the gold buckles and jewels on his swordbelt and scabbard. His hand rested on one hip while with the other he held up his wooden roundel, reversed, from which he read the poem painted on the rim.

‘Lord Elyot’s eldest son,’ her mother continued, ‘I think, dearest, that you ought to be making yourself a little more agreeable to Sir Nicholas. He’s going to be wasted on Cousin Hester.’

‘I’d much rather he played the part you invited him for,’ Adorna replied. ‘Though I think Hester’s wasted on him.’

But Lady Marion was only half-listening. ‘Don’t be difficult, dear. Come along!’ she called to Sir Nicholas’s group. ‘You must sing your roundelays, you know. I think you should be the one to start them off, Sir Nicholas, if you please. Show them how it should be done.’

The idea of having guests to sing for their suppers was not a new one, each one expecting to contribute to the others’ entertainment in some way either by singing or by playing an instrument. At thirteen, Adorna’s youngest brother Adrian usually had to be held back forcibly from being the first to perform, but this time he added his voice to his mother’s. Although Sir Nicholas’s roundelay was short, he made it last longer by singing it several times over to a simple tune of his own devising.

And so my love protesting came, but yet I made her mine.

His voice was true and vibrant, but Adorna refused to watch him perform, not wishing to see who he looked at while he sang. Yet as soon as the applause died down and another guest followed, a whispered comment at her back closed her ears to everything except the exchange of riveting gossip.

‘Pity he doesn’t make them his for longer than three months,’ a man’s voice said, half-laughing. ‘He goes through ’em faster than his master.’

‘Hah! Is that how long the last one was?’

‘Lady Celia. Traverson’s lass. Handsome woman, too, but ditched after three months. Penelope Mount-joy afore that and heaven knows how many afore her. He has ’em queueing up for him.’

‘But he’s only been in his post for a year or so.’

The voice chuckled. ‘Trying out the new mares.’

‘They’re happy to assist, eh?’

‘Aye, but not so happy to be left, apparently. Still, if he’s after old Pickering’s heiress, he’ll probably not find any protesting there.’

The two men joined in the applause though they had not listened to the song, but Adorna’s blood ran cold as she sidled away to the back of the crowd to avoid an invitation to sing, shivering with unease at the sickening words. Even among men it seemed that Sir Nicholas’s reputation as a rake was chuckled over, envied, plotted and predicted, his victims pitied. From the corner of her eye, she identified one of the gossips as her father’s colleague, the Master of the Queen’s Jewels, the other as a superior linen-draper who held a royal warrant.

Ditched after three months? Trying out the new mares? It was as she had suspected; the man had been amusing himself, teasing her to make her respond to him, despite her obvious antagonism. Then he would blithely go on to the next before choosing how, when and where to include Cousin Hester in his schemes, sure that she would defer to his convenience more than any other. For the hundredth time, she heard the woman’s sob echo through the evening, saw again her last slow touch, her hurried departure into oblivion. Her heart ached for the woman’s pain and for Hester, too, who would have no experience of how to deal with a man’s inconstancy, being unused to dalliance and light-hearted love affairs. Hester would not recognise insincerity if it was branded on a man’s forehead.

That much was true, though at that precise moment Hester was having no problems with her own brand of innocence or with other people’s kindness, whether the latter was sincerely meant or not. Dear Adorna and Lady Marion had identified her deficiencies, which were many, and had offered her every assistance to overcome them, and it would be both churlish and unnecessary to deprive them of the pleasure of success. Moreover, the pleasure was not all theirs. She practised her smile once more on a young gentleman who offered her a heart-shaped biscuit and saw how his eyes lit up with pleasure, as Sir Nicholas’s had done.

What a pity Aunt Sarah had not made her aware of such delights, but then, her foster parents were much older than Adorna’s and had had neither the time, experience nor patience to be plunged into parenthood with a ready-made child. They had provided her with an elderly nurse and tutor, shelter and food, a good education and firm discipline and, if she wanted company, there were always the horses. Uncle Samuel was a passionate horse-breeder: Aunt Sarah was not passionate about anything. Passion, she had once told Hester, was a shocking waste of energy.

Hester was satisfied, almost pleased, that Sir Nicholas had noticed the changes enough to compliment her. He had always been most kind, and it was quite obvious that Lady Marion had asked him here especially to put her at her ease. The least she could do in return was to remember what they had told her about smiling, listening and keeping her hands still.

She glanced across the long shadows that now striped the lawn, seeing Adorna talking animatedly to a group of men, her expressions so graceful, her hands and head articulate, her back curving and set firmly against Sir Nicholas from whom she had made no attempt to conceal her indifference. They had scarcely spoken to each other at the tennis court, nor had Adorna joined the ladies who surrounded him, but Hester supposed that the gentlemanly Master Fowler was Adorna’s special friend and that she preferred his company to anyone’s. Which Hester could well understand, though for their sakes she would make herself most agreeable to Sir Nicholas since that was clearly what they wished.

Her aunt and uncle had, naturally, warned her that once she was on her own, there would be fortune-hunters, but her mind was at rest as far as Sir Nicholas was concerned, he having a fortune of his own. Apart from that, if he had ever entertained thoughts along those lines, he had had plenty of chances during the six years or more he had been visiting Uncle Samuel.

The guests were beginning to move back into the house again, Adorna firmly linked to Master Fowler. To Hester a dear gentleman offered his arm, which she daintily laid her hand upon, smiling at him, picking up her skirts over the grass and thinking how much easier this was than she had once believed.

In the great hall, the tables and benches had been cleared to leave a space for the entertainments, and here Hester was happy to watch as sheets of music were handed to those guests who were prepared to perform on viol, flute and lute. Nothing could have been lovelier than when Adorna played a beautiful melody by William Byrd on the virginals, for she was able to sing at the same time in a voice so sweet that the guests were spellbound, making Hester appreciate even more how much she herself had to learn.

There was dancing, too, which had never been Hester’s strongest point, so she remained at one side in the company of yet another gentleman who talked non-stop about his fishing visits to Scotland when she would rather have listened to the music. She did, however, notice how Adorna kept her eyes lowered whenever she went forward to take Sir Nicholas’s hand, and how he looked at her without the smile that he had bestowed upon herself, which seemed to indicate that he was as little interested in Adorna as she appeared to be in him.

Then there was the play, written by seventeen-year-old Seton, Adorna’s brother. He had persuaded some of his friends from the theatre company known as Leicester’s Men to join him in this short and extremely funny performance, made all the funnier because it was entirely unrehearsed. Master Burbage, their leading actor, kept it all together somehow, but even he could not keep his face straight when Adrian, who had begged on his knees for a part, began to ad lib most dangerously, throwing the other characters off track. It brought the house down, the evening to a close, and Hester to the conclusion that, if it got no worse than this, she might begin to get used to dinner parties.

As duty demanded, Adorna stood with the rest of her family to bid each of the guests farewell, promising Master Burbage that she would rectify one glaring omission by attending one of the Leicester’s Men’s performances at their London venue before long. With a quick squeeze of her mother’s hand, she slipped away from the family group, along the passageway leading to the back of the house and out into the walled herb-garden. Here she waited until the calls of farewell had begun to fade. This was another of her refuges, used on this occasion as an escape from Peter who had earlier left her in no doubt that tonight a formal kiss on the knuckles would not be enough. Without seeking to argue about it, Adorna was convinced that anything more than that would be too much. It was better, she had whispered to her mother, if she disappeared and explained tomorrow, if need be. Lady Marion had had experience at making excuses.

It was almost dark, but still she could just see the brick pathway leading through the garden door on to the lawn where the guests had strolled earlier. There was the walkway that led to the banqueting house in the corner, the fountain still tinkling. Distant bursts of laughter and chatter still floated through the open windows, shapes moving in and out of soft candlelight.

Keeping to the shadows, she entered the small room with a feeling of relief that the evening was over, that she had escaped Peter’s personal leave-taking and that the act she had kept up all evening could now be dropped. The banqueting-house floor was still littered with crumbs in the light of a single candle that the servants had left burning, and a heap of wooden roundels, painted side uppermost, lay discarded on the table, their rhymes sung and forgotten. Holding them towards the candle flame, she went through the stack one by one until she found the one she wanted, peering to make out the words and touching them with the tips of her fingers.

‘And so my love protesting came,’ she whispered, reading as she turned it.

‘But yet I made her mine,’ came the reply from the doorway.

She half-leapt in fright, clutching the plate to her bodice and whirling to face him, angered by the intrusion. ‘I came here…’ she began, ready to resume the act. But the lines had already faded from memory, and she could only glare, defensively.

‘I know why you came here.’ Sir Nicholas closed the door quietly behind him. ‘You came here to escape Master Fowler’s attentions, in the first place. Isn’t that so? Poor Adorna. Saddling yourself all evening with him to keep yourself out of my way. Was it worth it, then?’

‘It worked well enough until now, sir!’ she snapped.

‘Tch, tch!’ He shook his handsome head, smiling with his eyes. His hair and the deep blue of his clothes blended into the shadowy room, but could not conceal the width of his shoulders or the deep swell of his chest. Though he made no move towards her, Adorna found his presence disconcerting after a whole evening of trying to avoid him. He held out a hand for the plate. ‘May I?’ he said.

Evading his eyes, she placed it back on the pile. ‘A silly jingle,’ she said. ‘Quite meaningless. I must not be seen with you here alone, Sir Nicholas. We have nothing to say to each other, and my father will—’

Before she could say what her father would do, he had stepped forward a pace and nipped the candle flame with his fingers, plunging the room into darkness except for the lambent glow from a rising moon. At the same time, Adorna’s neat sidesteps towards the door was anticipated by the intimidating bulk of his body. ‘Then we must make sure,’ he said, ‘that we are not seen here alone, mistress. But I cannot agree that we have nothing to say to each other when you said so little to me earlier in the evening. Do you not recall the moments when you could have spoken but chose not to? Shall we reconstruct the dance to ease the flow of conversation?’ In the darkness, he held out his hand.

She had noticed his graceful dancing, but this was a game she did not intend to play, nor was she by any means ready to fall into his flirtatious trap, as she was sure many others had done. Far from queueing up for his attentions, she wanted nothing to do with him, especially after what she had heard that evening. It was time someone taught him a lesson.

Taking up the act where she had left off, she let out an exaggerated sigh and turned away from him to stare out of the same window where, two nights ago, she had watched him kiss a woman in the friary paradise. ‘Sir Nicholas, I have had a busy day and I have little inclination to wake all Richmond with my screams. But I am prepared to do so if it’s the only way to get out of here. Now, please will you go and make your courtesies to my parents and leave me in peace? Others may find your ways diverting, but I don’t.’

In one step, he came to stand close behind her with his knees enveloped in her wide bell-shaped skirts. ‘For one so unmoved by my diverting ways, mistress, you send out some strangely contradicting signals,’ he said, his voice suddenly devoid of his former playfulness. ‘You came in here to seek my—’

‘I did not come in here to seek anything!’ she snarled at him over her shoulder. ‘The poem was one that caught my eye.’

‘I see.’ He allowed the explanation to go unchallenged. ‘So perhaps you came here to remind yourself of something you saw out there. Eh?’

‘I saw noth—’ She bit her words off, remembering that he had seen her. She started again. ‘What I caught the merest glimpse of, Sir Nicholas, in no way concerned me. If you choose to tell my father that you have no lady, that’s entirely your own affair. I care not if you have a different lady for each day of the week. All I ask is that you don’t ever consider me to be one of them.’

‘You may be a marginally better actor than your brothers, Adorna, but I still say that your signals are in a tangle. Shall I tell you why?’

Again, she made a move towards the door, but her skirts hampered her and this time his arm came across her to form a solid barrier. She willed herself to maintain an indifference that had nothing to do with the facts, to make her voice obey her head instead of her heart. It was not easy.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Don’t. If you find my signals conflicting, then you are obviously not reading them correctly, sir. Master Fowler finds them easy enough to understand, and so do other men. When I keep out of their way it means that I do not want their company. Now, what part of that message do you not understand? Shall I put it in French for you? Or Latin?’

Even in the darkness, she could feel the changes that crossed his face, his silence verifying that she had scored at last, checked his cocksureness. For once, he was nonplussed. But it did not last long. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’ he whispered. ‘Do you flee from all men on sight, just for the fun of the ride?’

His temporary unsureness gave her courage. ‘What I do with all men is none of your business, Sir Nicholas. But one thing I will tell you is that any man who compares me to a horse, however delicately, may as well take himself off to the other side of the Christendom. And if you’ve finally understood that I mean what I say, then I shall sleep better at nights. Now, return to your long line of amours, sir. They’ll be awaiting you.’