The House Of Allerbrook

“I do wish!” said Jane. She turned to him. “Of course I want to say goodbye to her. I can’t bear it that you’re sending her away forever!”

“If she had gone to court and then married someone from the other side of the country, you might never have seen her again. You may make your farewells, but once Sybil goes, she is out of our lives for good. Remember that! Now, come indoors. After supper I want you to play your lute for us.”

“Francis…”

“Yes, what is it?”

“Today someone suggested I might go to court instead. I don’t want to, one little bit.”

“Listen to me, Jane. You and Sybil were born into a good family, into a comfortable life in a house where you have had fine clothes and no hard work—every indulgence. Do you think you can have all that and not give something back? Sybil has thrown away her chance to be of use to her family. I trust you don’t want to throw yours away, as well!” He laughed. “You’re still very young. When you’re older, you’ll feel differently, I promise. If Palmer’s cousin finds a post for you later on, believe me, you’ll be delighted with it.”

Jane was silent, still leaning on the gate. The sun had come out as evening approached, and as it set, it shed a softness over everything, so that the green meadow was tinged with gold and faintly dappled with the shadows of the tussocks.

There were things she knew Francis would not understand. Their father would have done, but Johnny Sweetwater had died two years ago, struck down by a fever after getting soaked and frozen while bringing sheep in to safety from an unexpected snowstorm. Her mother had gone two years earlier, from some internal malady that no physician could explain. Since then, Jane and Sybil had been in the care of their elder brother and his wife, and no one could say that Francis or Eleanor had been anything but conscientious and kind, but they were not like Father.

He had loved Allerbrook, loved the racing waters in the combe, and the moor with its varying moods, and the yearly cycle of the farm. And so did Jane. She did not want to go away to court, and her father would have known. He would have been less harsh with Sybil, too. Angry, yes, but perhaps —not so unforgiving. There would have been hope for Sybil in the end.

Francis had a hardness in him which their father had lacked. If he wanted her to go to court, then go she would. And if she cried for Sybil, she had better do it secretly, in bed. “I’ll be glad to play my lute after supper,” she said, and followed Francis obediently indoors.

At Richmond Palace, by the River Thames a little to the west of London, the atmosphere was fraught. Queen Anne Boleyn was the cause. Her high-pitched voice and shrill laughter had been heard less than usual that day, but she gave the impression of being like a wound crossbow, which might at any moment release a bolt, and who knew which one of them would be the target?

King Henry, who was planning improvements to the private rooms at Greenwich Palace, miles downstream to the east, was engaged all day with architects and did not see the queen until he joined her for supper. Most of the conversation then concerned the choice of wall hangings for the refurbished rooms and Queen Anne took part amiably enough though those who knew her well sensed that her apparent good humour had much in common with a set of gilded bars on a cage containing an irascible tigress.

When the meal was over, in her most gracious and persuasive tones Anne invited Henry to join a game of cards with her and some other friends.

As the darkness closed in, the group settled in a snug, tapestried chamber, lit by firelight, candles and lamps, scented by sweet lamp-oils, and the rosemary in the rushes on the floor.

There, in the flickering half-light, as the cards were dealt, Anne employed them to send a secret message to Henry.

It was one of their private games, this exchange of signals that only they could read. To hold the cards in one’s right hand and pensively flick the leftmost card with the other hand was to say, I love you. For him to run a forefinger slowly and sensually across the edge of the fan of cards was to say, I desireyou. I will come tonight. For her to do the same was an invitation. Please come tonight. I will be awake and waiting. For either of them to flick the face of each card in turn with the nail of a forefinger was to reply, You will be welcome or I will come.

In the course of the evening’s play she fingered the edge of her cards four times, lingeringly, invitingly. But at no point did the king’s small greenish-grey eyes meet her dark ones; at no point did the square bearded face above the slashed velvet doublet show any awareness of her except as a fellow player in the game. Nor did his thick forefinger ever flick the face of any card at all.

What am I to do? I have borne him one daughter and lost onemale infant. He is turning away from me. He had a mistress lastyear, I know he did, and she wasn’t the first. I will only win himback if I give him a son, and how can I give him a son if he willnot make love to me? Or if he can’t?

The previous night Henry had failed her. She had used every art she could think of to help him, without success. Now it seemed he was refusing even to try. Perhaps he was ashamed. But she was afraid, because she knew he would blame her both for his failure and her own. Her dreadful failure, in his eyes, to produce a prince to follow him.

He had blamed her openly last night. He had said, “If only you were a real woman. If only you could have a healthy child every year, and half of them sons, like other women! If you were a real woman, I’d be a real man!”

“I am a real woman!” she had shouted. “What else could I be?”

“A witch,” said King Henry nastily. “Or a whore.”

Oh, God, make him come to me tonight and make him able. Letus make a sturdy son. Because if we don’t…

If we don’t make a son, I shall be blamed and blamed andblamed. I’ve given him a sweet red-haired Tudor daughter, but whatuse is a daughter? Elizabeth can’t be his heir, any more than hersister Mary can. He told his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, that fora king to have only daughters was the same as being childless altogether.But how can a woman choose whether her babies are boys orgirls? Unjust, unjust! I could kill him! Or I could kill God, fordenying me this one thing that I need, that he needs, so badly.

Henry was thinking, Candlelight doesn’t suit her. It suits mostwomen, but it makes her look weird. Like a sorceress. Maybe she isa sorceress. I wanted her so much. I’ve turned the church upside downfor her, broken away from the Pope, changed the ritual, startedclosing down monasteries…not that the monks don’t deserve it, fat,luxurious layabouts that most of them are. But how did she makeme want her to that point, just the same? Was it witchery? If shedoesn’t stop fingering those cards, I’ll get up and walk out of thisroom. We need another signal. One that says No, stop it.

I’m getting tired of her, and my other queen is still alive. Twounwanted queens and no son. Was ever a man so accursed?

CHAPTER FOUR

A Port in a Storm 1535

“There’s no room here for idle hands,” Katherine said to Sybil a matter of minutes after their arrival in Lynmouth.

Sybil had made the journey on a pillion behind a groom and they had travelled slowly, but she was tired. By the time they were on the steep track down into the little harbour village of Lynmouth at the base of its towering cliffs, she was longing for a quiet bedchamber with a cup of wine to restore her.

At the door of the house, just before the foot of the hill, they dismounted and servants came out to deal with panniers and horses. The main door opened straight into a big panelled parlour. Sybil had seen it before. When her parents were alive, the Allerbrooks had once or twice attended Christmas revels at the Lanyons’ home. Now, however, she paused uncertainly, wondering where to go, until Katherine tapped her arm and said, “Follow me.”

The house was old and creaky and tall. Katherine led the way up a steep and somewhat rickety staircase to an attic room. There were no luxuries here, no hearth or bed-hangings. There was a clothespress, a window seat that lifted to reveal a chest below, one small shelf with a candlestick on it and a plain truckle bed with no bedding.

“Your things will be fetched up presently and I’ll have the bed made up,” Katherine said. “For now, just take off your cloak and hat and leave them here, and then come down to the dining parlour. Do you remember where it is?”

No rest, then. Not even a wash! She went down to the dining parlour, which led out of the main parlour, and found that food was being set out. She was not, however, to eat anything yet.

“You can serve us while we eat and leave the other maids free to get on with other things,” Katherine said. Sybil stared at her and that was the moment when Katherine said, “There’s no room here for idle hands. Everyone’s always busy,” she added. “You can eat when we’ve finished.”

She was presented to the servants as Mistress Sybil Waters, a young widow, a relative, but without means. “We’ve never known anyone called Waters, so as a name it won’t cause confusion,” Owen said.

Sybil was willing enough to acquiesce, but the groom who had accompanied the party to Allerbrook certainly knew the truth, and she had no doubt that he would soon tell the three maids and the manservant Perkins all about it. If this was a port in a storm, it also promised to be a port in a hostile country.

The days that followed were harsh. Katherine, however well-bred in society, was less fastidious in private, where she raised her voice whenever she pleased. Only Owen was exempt. His wife shouted at everyone else and handed out frequent slaps, and Sybil was sure that she received more than her fair share. At Allerbrook such things were rare. At Allerbrook, too, people often smiled. If only, in Lynmouth, someone now and then would smile at her. But no one ever did and on top of that, there was the work.

Rooms must be dusted, clothes mended, onions peeled, loaves shaped, pots stirred, fish gutted, stores counted, floors swept, dishes washed, guests waited on, and Sybil was called upon to perform these tasks, for all the world as though she were a maidservant instead of a kinswoman.

Owen belonged to a consortium of merchants, but he had a ship of his own and often sailed abroad to buy dyes and spices and bales of silk in person, rather than leave it to agents. He and Idwal were often away from home on trading expeditions, and the first time the two of them set off, Sybil hoped that there might be less to do. She was wrong. Left in command, Katherine became not so much a conscientious housewife as a slave driver.

When the men were away, she said, that was the time to get some real work done. New shirts must be made for husband and son, and a spell of spring sunshine inspired her to have all the linen in the house, both bed linen and undergarments, thoroughly washed and put out to dry.

Never before had Sybil been asked to work so long or so hard. At home she sometimes helped in the kitchen and dairy, but she had had time to herself to enjoy books—poetry, travel and devotional works. In the evenings they would all take turns with the lute and there might be dancing or cards or backgammon.

She had realized that life at court would be different, but there she had hoped to find glamour, to wear fashionable clothes, to attend masques and tournaments. There was no glamour and precious little merriment in her life now. There wasn’t even time to read. She had pushed two books into her panniers, but she had not had a moment to open either of them.

At times she was so tired that she could scarcely force her feet to walk, and she would stumble off to bed as soon as she could after supper had been eaten and she had helped to wash the platters. And oh, the aching, desperate need for somebody to smile at her.

She was not asked to do heavy tasks like carrying full buckets about, but it seemed to her that the Lanyons were still, stealthily, creating conditions which might bring on a miscarriage. And that Francis had probably instructed them to do so.

Her back ached constantly and the calling of the gulls as they wheeled and soared above Lynmouth, free as the wind and gliding on it with outspread wings, was like mocking laughter. Now, lying on her pallet at the end of another dreadful day in which one menial task had followed another in pitiless procession, Sybil tossed unhappily, unable to find a position which would accommodate her swelling abdomen in comfort.

“All this,” she said aloud, “all this just because that Andrew Shearer got me giggly at his son’s christening party, plying me with cider, and then said, come and see how the red calf ’s grown, that was born so late this year. I don’t even like Andrew Shearer!”

Not that Shearer was ugly. He had flint-coloured eyes but they could glint with amusement, and he had a knack of fixing his gaze on someone in a way that made the someone feel as though they were the only person in his world. His narrow face was shapely enough, and on the night of the celebration his black hair, though overlong as usual, wasn’t untidy as it normally was, but carefully combed.

He had been persuasive, refilling her tankard with cider and looking at her, watching her, with those bright, flinty eyes. Then, before she knew what was happening, he’d put an arm around her, steered her out of the room where the others were dancing, across the central passage and into the adjoining byre, dark except for a glimmer of starlight through a gap under the eaves and full of the warm, pungent smell of cattle and horses.

There’d been no more talk of the red calf then—not that they could have seen it in the gloom, anyway. Instead, Andrew Shearer had put his mouth over hers and gripped her tightly and somehow slid them both down onto a pile of straw in a vacant stall.