The House Of Allerbrook

“Yes. You’ve missed the wedding, as a matter of fact. This way,” said Sir Edmund.

The route to his rooms was lengthy, across courtyards through long passageways with ornate ceilings, but finally he stopped, put a key into the lock of an unobtrusive door and showed them into a well-furnished parlour with a bedchamber visible beyond a wide archway in the farther wall. A fire sent out blessed waves of heat.

“Please sit down, everyone,” Sir Edmund said. “Yes, all of you. You all look frozen.” The two tirewomen had been hanging back, but accepted the invitation thankfully. “It’s no wonder that you’re late,” their host said as they settled themselves. “Winter travelling is so difficult. But it’s a pity you took so long.”

“We made what speed we could,” said Thomas Stone anxiously. “The appointments are sound, are they not? I mean…”

“Yes, yes, perfectly sound.” Sir Edmund paused as two manservants came in with the wine and pasties he had mentioned. “Here—you probably need this. You’ve had an icy welcome.” He waited until they had been served and the servants had gone and then said, “Presently I’ll call someone to show the young ladies to their quarters and introduce them to Queen Anna and the rest of her household. But I think I had better explain the situation. If you’d been here earlier, you’d have seen it develop, but as things are…”

They looked at him in surprise, waiting for him to go on. “It’s very difficult,” he said, “and confidential. The wedding was three days ago, on the sixth of January. Since then, alas… Oh, how hard it is to explain! I must warn you. It’s no secret within the court, and if I don’t tell you, you’ll soon hear everything, but all the same, it must not be bruited about outside. The king is not pleased with his bargain. I must also tell you that Queen Anna herself seems unaware of this. She is, I think, a very decent and…and innocent lady.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Thomas. “You’re not making yourself clear.”

Sir Edmund looked at him and turned red.

“You mean,” said Ralph shrewdly, “that the marriage is no marriage and may not hold?”

“King Henry tried his best to get out of it before the vows were taken,” said Sir Edmund. “There was some talk of a precontract. But Queen Anna took an oath that it was untrue and that she was free to marry, and so that way of escape was blocked. You young ladies are coming into a delicate situation. You must walk carefully and watch your tongues, and how long there will be a queen in need of maids of honour or ladies-in-waiting, I wouldn’t like to guess.”

“But he can’t…he wouldn’t…!” gasped Eleanor.

“If there has been no carnal knowledge,” said Thomas, “he won’t need to do anything drastic. There could be an annulment. He certainly can’t behead the daughter of a noble European house, even if he manages to…er…invent…”

“Hmm,” said Ralph. “I’d heard that when His Majesty first began seeking a bride to replace Jane Seymour, Christina, the daughter of the Duchess of Milan, said she’d only marry him if she had two heads and therefore a neck to spare.”

“No one’s hiding behind any of my tapestries,” said Sir Edmund, “but there are things it isn’t advisable to say out loud. Tread carefully, cousin Ralph.”

He looked at Jane and Dorothy. “And be kind to Queen Anna. Protect her as long as you can. She, too, has had an icy welcome and she doesn’t deserve it. As a matter of fact, she is winning hearts at court and elsewhere. She is kind to her household and charitable to the poor. The only heart she can’t win, apparently, is King Henry’s!”

CHAPTER NINE

Strange New World 1540

Jane’s first impressions of life at court were blurred by bewilderment and loneliness. Of those who had come with her, Dorothy was soon the only one left and she had never been close to Dorothy. Thomas Stone, Dr. Spenlove and Eleanor left for home almost at once. Ralph stayed for two weeks, but was then taken away by Sir Edmund to a house party in Kent. After that, to all intents and purposes, Jane was alone.

She liked the new queen, though. Anna of Cleves was not beautiful, since her complexion was lustreless and her eyes heavy lidded, but she had a sweet smile and gracious manners. When Dorothy remarked to Jane that the new queen was ugly and had hardly any English, she received a sharp answer.

“She’s in a foreign country, trying to find her feet, and I think she’s got a lovely smile,” snapped Jane. “If you had to go and live in Germany, I wonder how fast you’d learn the language?”

And if there had ever been the faintest hope that because they, too, were finding their feet in a strange new world, Dorothy and Jane would draw together and make friends, it died at that moment.

Mistress Lowe, the stately matron in charge of the maids of honour, was more than a little intimidating. One of the first things that she impressed on the new arrivals was how much there was to learn. There was a routine to get used to, protocol to study and crowds of people whose identities had to be memorized just like the details of the routine.

Mistress Lowe undertook the introductions, to the court officials, the other ladies and maids of honour. There were so many that they made Jane feel dizzy.

“Mistress Sweetwater, Mistress Stone, these ladies have come from Cleves, to serve Queen Anna. This is Gertrude, this is Hanna, this is Eva…”

Of the German women, only Hanna had any English to speak of, and to Jane, they all looked alike—heavily built and dowdy. But the English women at the queen’s side were nearly as confusing. How will I ever remember all these names? Jane wondered in a panic as she and Dorothy were introduced to Mary, to Elizabeth, to another Mary, to Susanna and Elise. “And this is Madam Elizabeth, the king’s daughter.”

Madam Elizabeth was a small, solemn, redheaded girl, and she at least would be easy to remember, though in the event, Jane saw little of her, since she had her own apartments and rarely came into the presence of either the queen or the king. Another who was easy to remember, however, and was very much part of the queen’s entourage, was “Kate Howard, our youngest maid of honour.”

Kate Howard looked no more than fifteen and was as pretty as a rose, with winning manners. “You are a good girl,” Mistress Lowe said to her once when she had managed to soothe the hurt feelings of Hanna, who was sensitive. “You are like oil in a stiff lock.”

The maids of honour were supposed always to be near their mistress and ready to run errands. Jane found this hair-raising at first, as she was never sure where she was supposed to go or how to recognize whoever it was she was supposed to speak to. The principal officials, who carried white sticks as a sign of office and were actually called White Staves, all looked as dignified as emperors, while their supporting staff, who worked in a perfect warren of rooms, seemed as numerous as an army.

There was a huge department called Greencloth Accounting—because of the green-covered table at which daily conferences were held—which was entirely devoted to ordering food supplies, paying the suppliers, planning menus and dispensing the ingredients to the kitchens. Queen Anna sometimes wished for dishes not familiar to the English cooks, and Jane’s first errand was to the Greencloth Department, armed with a recipe, written out in English by the bilingual Hanna.

She lost her way three times and when she did find the right place, though people were polite and accepted the recipe she presented to them, she felt presumptuous, like a small child trying to give instruction to adults.

Other errands took her outside the palace. Sometimes, with other ladies, Jane went by river into London to look at merchants’ goods and place orders. It was not a pleasure. The court was crowded enough and at times smelly with a distasteful mingling of body odours and cloying perfumes, but London streets were worse. They were a chaos of thronging people and lofty horsemen who seemed prepared to ride down anyone who got in their way; the streets were littered with horse droppings and human ordure flung from windows, and the stench was like a hand clutching at her throat.

But there were more and worse unpleasantnesses to come, as Jane discovered, and oddly enough, her carefully acquired skill at music was responsible. Queen Anna quite soon learned from someone, probably Sir Edmund Flaxton, that young Mistress Sweetwater played the virginals well. There came an evening when, in the queen’s private rooms, which contained musical instruments, the queen, with gestures and halting phrases, asked Jane to perform for her.

The queen took supper apart, with a select group of attendants and courtiers. But the day after Jane’s debut as a musician she was told that she and pretty little Kate Howard had been invited to join the inner circle that evening, as guests. Dorothy was not included, which made her glower.

Jane was instructed to dress with care, and her tirewoman Lisa helped her put on a tawny damask very like the one which had once been meant for Sybil. “The colour suits you well, madam,” Lisa said.

A page showed her to the dining chamber, which proved to be a small but luxurious hall, hung with glowing tapestries and lit by innumerable candles. And this evening the king was present, seated beside his wife. For the first time, Jane beheld King Henry VIII of England.

She was near enough to see and hear him clearly. He was broad chested and strong voiced, jewelled and befurred, a powerfully dominant presence even when he was doing nothing more remarkable than saying good evening to his table companions. He was also, as far as Jane was concerned, heavily jowled and overweight. He reminded her of a bear she had once seen at a fair in Minehead, a lumbering thing with the same small, angry eyes. She pitied the poor queen, if Anna had to endure that hulking body on top of her at night. If Sir Edmund were correct, of course, perhaps she was spared it. In her place, Jane would have been thankful.

“You are new to the court, are you not?” said a voice in her ear, and she turned to find that her right-hand neighbour was addressing her. It was a man, and to her surprise his voice held a trace of the familiar west country accent. She looked at him with interest. He was not unlike Ralph, except that his hair was dark brown rather than black and he had a beard, which Ralph had not, and a more aquiline nose. He seemed older, too. He was smiling pleasantly at her and she smiled back.

“Yes, sir, very new. Everything is still very strange. I know hardly anyone yet.”

“My name is Peter Carew. And you are…?”

“Jane. Jane Sweetwater. Master Carew, was Sir William Carew of Mohuns Ottery in Devon a relative of yours? He was a friend of my family.”

“He was indeed, and I know who you are now, though we haven’t met before. My father spoke of the Sweetwaters sometimes. I am Sir William’s youngest son and was one of his biggest problems, until I went off with the French army and vanished,” said Peter Carew cheerfully, and chuckled.

Across the table Kate Howard called out, “What’s the joke?”

“My family history,” said Carew, grinning. “I was sent abroad when I was young and eventually disappeared so thoroughly that my parents thought I was dead. When I came back to England and went to see them before joining the court, I gave my mother such a shock that she fainted. Peter, she said, you’re dead! You’ve come back from the grave! And then she sat down on the nearest seat and rolled up her eyes and passed out. You cause trouble even by walking through a door! my father said to me.”

Jane was working it out. At that dreadful dinner that should have been for Sybil, Sir William Carew had mentioned a son, Peter, and had described him as a pert, forward brat who, when sent out in the world, had got himself demoted from page to stable boy because of misbehaviour. This must be the same Peter Carew. He seemed to be a sufficiently dignified and responsible young gentleman now. He couldn’t really be much older than Ralph. Was it the beard that made him seem so? No, it was something in the man himself. He had gone adventuring; he had seen the world and acquired experience. That was the difference.

Kate Howard was still listening. “I’m sure,” she said wickedly, “that you could cause all sorts of trouble if you wanted to.”

“Minx,” said Carew amiably, but kept his attention on Jane. “You haven’t been here long enough to realize, I suppose, but the court’s a strange place just now.”

“I know,” said Jane in a low voice.

“I like Queen Anna,” Carew said. “I was with the escort that went to meet her at Calais. But then…” He shook his head and ceased talking, because servants were coming around with dishes and could have overheard. Before supper, Mistress Lowe had warned Jane that some of the deferential persons now recommending a spicy mutton stew were paid to report questionable remarks and opinions to Thomas Cromwell, the king’s most trusted aide.

As the servers withdrew, Carew, as though he knew what Jane was thinking, remarked, “The man who has gone up to the king and is speaking to him now is Thomas Cromwell. He is a great power in the land.”

“The heavyset man in the dark clothes?”