The House Of Allerbrook

“I’d better leave word of some sort,” Jane said as his instructions ended. “I’m part of the queen’s household. She’ll feel responsible. She might send after me! Maybe King Henry will, too!”

“King Henry,” said Peter, though he kept his voice down, “is still officially a married man, and—this is treason, of course, kindly don’t repeat it—what with putting Queen Catherine aside, beheading Queen Anne and now planning to annul his present consort, he’s getting a reputation. If he goes chasing, either personally or by proxy, after an errant maid of honour, there’ll be talk and even laughter. He won’t want that! Leave a note for the queen. Don’t mention the king. Say you were homesick. Say you’re going home with a reliable escort. That should reduce the chance of any pursuit. Can you trust your tirewoman?”

“Lisa? Yes.”

“Does she need to travel by pillion or can she ride?”

“Lisa rides very well. You won’t fail me?”

“I won’t fail you. I love an adventure,” said Peter, laughing. “Oh, and don’t worry. You will travel as my sister and I shall not treat you as anything else. I’ll bring you home unharmed, I promise.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Wrong Response 1540

Afterward, Jane marvelled at how smoothly it went. The following evening, as Peter had suggested, she pretended to feel unwell. In the morning the other maids of honour went to the chapel with their tirewomen, but Jane, still complaining of illness, stayed behind with Lisa to look after her. Once everyone else was out of sight, she rose and prepared a note while Lisa packed a hamper with essentials. Then she put the note half under her pillow. It would be found, but with luck, not for some time.

Because the hamper was heavy, she helped Lisa carry it outside and down to the landing stage. They were stopped only once, by a White Stave who was not for some reason in the chapel, and who called to them, quite jovially, to ask where they were going. Jane had planned for this sort of thing and answered unflinchingly that they were on a char itable errand for the queen.

“What’s in the hamper, then? Clothes for the poor?”

“Yes,” said Jane, and opened the lid to show the respectable but dull cloak she had deliberately put on top. Queen Anna collected plain and hard-wearing items of clothing to be sent to the people responsible for distributing charity: the vicars, mayors, parish overseers in charge of housing orphans and apprenticing them to trades. The White Stave nodded, smiled and stepped back to let them pass.

“Come, Lisa,” said Jane briskly. “We should hurry. We mustn’t be late back.” Whereupon the White Stave escorted them to the landing stage in person and hailed a boatman for them.

Jane gave the boatman his instructions while Lisa, who had grasped her conspirator’s role very well, busily thanked the White Stave and prevented him from hearing the words White Bull Inn. They boarded and waved goodbye to him and then they were off on time, making for the inn three miles upstream. Peter Carew was there, as he had said he would be. He introduced them to the landlord as his sister and her woman servant, and since neither of them had breakfasted, ordered refreshments. After that, the two grooms who were with him saddled the horses he had hired and they set out again, by road.

Jane was still afraid of possible pursuit, but Carew was not. There was something very resolute about him, Jane thought.

“The court’s like a rabbit warren,” he said, “especially at Whitehall. Everyone will think you’re just somewhere else. By the time your note is found, we’ll be leagues away. Don’t be anxious.”

He added, as they rode on, “That landlord thinks you’re my sister, but the grooms know who you are and that you’re escaping from the court to protect your good name. They approve. Have no fear of any of us.”

It took eight days of steady riding, but there were no alarms and Peter never seemed uncertain of the road. “How is it that you know your way about so thoroughly? I thought you’d been abroad for years!” Jane asked him once.

“I was, but since I’ve been back, I’ve travelled with the court on royal progresses and besides, I always make sure I understand the world I’m living in and how to get from here to there. You never know when it may come in useful.”

He grinned at her, a bold, adventurer’s grin. Combined with his air of experience and maturity, it created a heady attraction. Jane, looking at his strong brown face with its aquiline nose and shapely chin, experienced a curious physical sensation, as though a warm and powerful hand had gripped her guts and jerked.

This would never do. She must not indulge such feelings. She had no business to have them. She must not fall in love with Peter Carew! He came, and she knew it, from a family even more in the habit of making wealthy marriages than Ralph’s. A Sweetwater wouldn’t qualify. That was the way of the world.

Peter showed no sign of falling in love in return. Both he and his grooms showed Jane and Lisa the utmost respect. Jane knew she must be grateful for this and quelled the regrettable part of her that seemed, mysteriously, to be wishing the contrary. She kept Lisa always by her side and guarded her tongue, to the point, she sometimes thought, of seeming dull and prim. On the morning of the ninth day, she came home.

When she was once more within sight of the Exmoor hills, she felt a relief so great that she could almost have fallen from the saddle to kiss the ground beneath. It was raining, but the soft drizzle of Somerset felt like a caress. The very village seemed to welcome her. She looked with delight at the tower of St. Anne’s church, built of pale Caen stone, imported for the purpose long ago by one of Jane’s own forebears. And there on its knoll stood Clicket Hall, which was similar to Allerbrook House but older, the battlements of its small tower more genuine looking and less ornamental than Allerbrook’s.

Even the thatched houses of the village seemed to smile at her. This was home. She would never go back to the court. The king would probably turn his attention to poor little Kate Howard now and she pitied the girl, but Kate must look after herself. Jane Sweetwater had escaped, and forever.

They started up the combe under the dripping trees, the pinkish mud of the track squelching beneath the horses’ hooves and splashing up their legs. The main track to Allerbrook House led off to the left about two-thirds of the way up to the ridge. Then the house was in sight, with smoke drifting from the chimneys. “Home!” said Jane ecstatically. Peter, who had a bigger horse, looked down at her and laughed.

“You would never survive years abroad, would you? You’re no wanderer. Not like me.”

The thought shot through her mind that if she had Peter Carew for company, perhaps she could bear to travel; perhaps, with him, everything would seem different. But she mustn’t say that, or even let her eyes betray it. “Here we are,” he was saying. “Your very own gate.”

“Our very own dogs and geese, as well!” said Jane as the usual cacophony broke out to welcome them.

It brought Francis out of the house at once. He came across the yard at a run, holding a coat over his head.

“God’s teeth! Jane! What are you doing here? And who is this?” He stared inimically at Carew.

“I’m Peter, the youngest son of your old friend Sir William Carew. I have escorted Mistress Jane all the way from Whitehall Palace. She has come home of her own free will and for a good and honourable reason. She’ll tell you all about it herself. Master Sweetwater, I don’t want to impose on you, but we’ve been on the road since early this morning. The horses need rest and fodder and both I and my grooms would welcome something to eat. I’m not inviting myself to dine, but…”

“You’d better dine,” said Francis shortly. “And of course we’ll take care of the horses. Get down and come inside.”

His voice was brusque, and as he helped Jane to alight she looked into his face and saw no friendly welcome there. His blue eyes were cold. He turned away as soon as she was safely down and led the way indoors without looking back. The maids came out to meet her, but their welcome seemed muted and the house felt curiously empty.

Master Corby, she knew, had left his post and gone away, but neither Dr. Spenlove nor Eleanor appeared from anywhere to greet her, and why was there a goshawk in the hall? Francis had set up a perch for her; clearly keeping her there was now a regular thing. There were mutes splashed on the floor amid the rushes. Eleanor would hate that! Where was Eleanor? Timidly, as she pulled her drenched cloak off, she addressed Francis’s back and asked.

For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he turned and she saw that his jaw was clenched and that his eyes had tears in them. “She’s in the family tomb in St. Anne’s, my dear. She died a week ago. Dr. Spenlove is down in Clicket now, talking to the mason about extra wording to go on the side of the tomb. I meant to write to you today.”

It had been a chill, nothing more. Over dinner, which Peggy had hastily enlarged for the visitors by frying a lot of sausages and onions and cutting extra bread, Francis explained. They had been buying goods in Dulverton. The weather had turned suddenly treacherous and Eleanor had been both wet and cold when she came home.

“She’d had a cold just before. She still had a cough. We set out in sunshine—it should have done her good. Instead—she relapsed. She was dead inside a week,” said Francis shortly. It was as though he were angry as well as grieving.

With obvious sincerity Carew expressed condolences. Jane, both grief-stricken and shocked, shed tears and exclaimed, “Oh, Francis!”

Francis, however, merely nodded coldly. The hall was warm and the food welcome, but there was a stiff atmosphere around the table which didn’t seem to be connected to Eleanor’s death. When Jane caught Peter Carew’s eye, she saw that he had noticed the awkwardness, as well. In an attempt to lighten the air, she said, “It’s as well I’m here. I can take charge of the house and look after you, Francis.”

“I was managing very well, thank you,” said Francis, still in a voice which seemed to hold fury as much as sorrow.

Peter Carew glanced at him thoughtfully, but maintained a tactful silence. After the meal, having been assured that the horses had been groomed and given food, he took his leave and with the grooms, rode off on the last stage of his own journey home to Devon. His home in Mohuns Ottery was still a long way off.

“He was very kind,” said Jane as she and Francis stood at the door to watch them go. She wished Peter could have stayed. He had felt like a bulwark against whatever it was that was so angering Francis. “He took every care of Lisa and myself and behaved…behaved in a very gentlemanly way. I haven’t told you yet why I’ve come home.”

“No,” Francis agreed. “And now, my dear sister, send your woman to unpack your belongings and let us sit by the hall fire, and then you can do your explaining. And by all the saints, your excuse had better be good.”

“You complete fool,” said Francis when he had heard her story. “You unmitigated wantwit! I don’t suppose it will be any use to send you back. Very likely the court wouldn’t have you! I suppose I’ll have to send to Taunton to hire a messenger to let Queen Anna know you’ve reached your home safely. Thank you so much, Jane, for putting me to so much trouble, and for ruining your chances and mine.”

“Francis, what are you talking about?”

“You had a unique opportunity, my girl. Rumours get around. They reach us here, far from London though we are. Ralph Palmer is back in the west country now and he brought a tale or two. And there have been others. I went to a fair at Dunster just before Eleanor died. The Luttrells seem to be basing themselves at East Quantoxhead mostly now, but I came across the steward they’ve left at Dunster Castle. He hears from them and they hear plenty of news from the court. He says that the king hasn’t taken to his new queen. And now you tell me he’s had his eyes on you! By the sound of it, you could have become his mistress if you’d gone about it the right way.”

“But…you wouldn’t want me to do that! Francis, you couldn’t!” It was the last kind of welcome she had expected. It was altogether the wrong response. “You were so angry with Sybil when…”

“Sybil played the whore with one of my tenants! A man of no importance! You could have had the favour of the king! Think what rewards he might have given you, and your family! In fact, if the Luttrells’ steward was right, the king means to get out of that marriage. Maybe you’d have had a chance to be something more than a mistress, and think what that could do for us!”

“Yes, I could end up headless!”

“Nonsense. You would have more sense. I told you that before.”