The House Of Allerbrook

“It’s a relief to have him,” Francis said to Jane. “I feel easy about going to Dulverton, and I really must. I’ve half a dozen things to do there. Come with me.” And with that, they set off on the seven-mile ride to the little town, among other things to order supplies of wine from a vintner there, and buy linen to make new shirts for Francis.

On arrival, they heard the loud bell and the stentorian voice of the crier and went toward the sound. They sat on their mounts in the midst of a crowd, listening. When the crier ended his announcement of King Henry’s new marriage, Francis, turning to Jane, said something that terrified her.

“So the new queen’s one of the old one’s ladies-in-waiting. It’s a thousand pities Sybil didn’t behave herself better, or you weren’t a bit older. If one of you had been at court, why, the next queen could have been you!”

He wasn’t joking. Jane knew it at once. He meant what he said. He was harbouring hair-raising ambitions. He was seriously imagining himself as the brother-in-law of King Henry, with one of his sisters on a throne.

“It might be dangerous,” she said, and knew that her voice was trembling. “Look what happened to Queen Anne!”

“Well, I don’t believe it would ever happen to you, though I can’t say the same of Sybil,” Francis said. “Everyone says there was no truth in the charges, but who can really know? Maybe there was.”

“Even with her own brother?” said Jane.

“Yes. I grant you that’s hard to believe,” Francis agreed. “But all the same, I feel that perhaps Queen Anne was…shall we say, not quite trustworthy. What happened to her isn’t likely to happen to anyone else.”

They rode slowly homeward, their various purchases stowed in saddlebags. The moorland tracks were narrow, but when Jane saw a chance to edge her pony up alongside Francis, she seized it.

“Francis, I want to ask you something.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“Please can you tell me how Sybil is? I haven’t seen her or heard a word about her since she went away. The Lanyons haven’t visited us, but I know you’ve seen Master Owen, more than once. I heard you tell Eleanor you’d seen him last year at a fair somewhere….”

“Dunster,” said Francis. “Where the castle is. During the fair, Owen and Katherine dined at Dunster Castle as guests of the Luttrell family. Owen’s a successful man these days.”

“He must have mentioned Sybil, or you must have asked after her, surely! How is she? Did she have the baby safely? I want to know.”

“Sybil is nothing to do with you, Jane. Not anymore.”

“But she is! She’s my sister, whatever she’s done, and if there’s a child, it’s my niece or my nephew. And yours, too!”

Francis relented a little. “Sybil had a boy child last August. He has been named Stephen. They are still with the Lanyons. They are perfectly safe and there’s no need for you to worry about them.”

“I’d like to visit them. I’d like to see Sybil again.”

“No, Jane. I can’t allow that.” Francis spoke sharply. “Your life is going to take a very different course from hers, believe me. With a new queen on the throne, there may well be a need for new maids of honour. I’d like to see you become one of them. I want to bring our family up in the world, Jane. And it’s a hard world. Life was cosier, perhaps, for our forebears. The world is wider now, and colder. You want to stay at Allerbrook, I know, but sometimes, my sister, sacrifices must be made.”

No, prayed Jane, silently but passionately, to God in the sky above, to fate, to Providence—if necessary, to the ancient gods who had been worshipped by the long-departed people who had left their strange marks upon the moor in the form of upright stones and the barrow mounds where they buried their chieftains. There was a barrow on top of the ridge. When she had been free to take walks, she had liked standing on top of it. The view from there was so immense. No, andno and no. I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go. Stop Francis fromsending me. Please!

* * *

Her prayers were apparently answered. Word came from London that there were no vacancies for maids of honour or ladies-in-waiting. Queen Jane Seymour had all the ladies and maids that she required.

“Well, the queen’s little namesake is still young,” said Thomas Stone, arriving for the Christmas revel at Allerbrook and greeting Jane with a kiss. “Plenty of time. Maids of honour marry, ladies-in-waiting go home to produce children. Vacancies will arise sooner or later. I fully intend to get Dorothy a place at court one day.”

He and his family had been away on their principal estate in Kent, but had come to Somerset for Christmas so that Mistress Mary Stone could visit her cousins in Porlock, though not stay with them.

“We get on their nerves if we stay long,” Thomas confided, “and there are no girls there of Dorothy’s age. Still, family is family and besides, here in Somerset we can stay at Clicket Hall, which we like very much, and Dorothy can have Jane for company sometimes. Isn’t that so, Dorothy?”

“Yes, of course,” said Dorothy dutifully. Jane tried not to sigh. She did not enjoy spending time with Dorothy Stone, who seemed to her very dull and was inclined to take offence easily. She longed for Sybil instead.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Avenue of Escape 1536–1537

Sybil, at that very moment, was longing with all her heart for Jane.

She had been missing her sister more and more. Jane had been the one person at home who hadn’t condemned her, who had kissed her goodbye and wished her well. Dear, dear Jane. Vaguely, as she rode away with her new guardians, she had hoped that one day, somehow, she and her sister would be together again, but it hadn’t happened. It seemed that her presence in the Lanyon house had changed the relationship between the two families. She knew from overhearing talk between Master Owen and Mistress Katherine that Owen often met Francis, out in the world, frequently at fairs where goods and animals were bought and sold. But it seemed that they had decided to keep their womenfolk apart.

In Lynmouth, Katherine and Owen had duly presented Sybil to their neighbours as a young widow and Stephen had been correctly baptized in the church at Lynmouth. But there had been no celebration to follow. Sybil, it seemed, was to be kept out of the public eye. One of the maidservants told her, spitefully, that Katherine had put it about that she had no dowry because her husband had been poor, and was in any case devoted to his memory and did not intend to remarry.

Sometimes Sybil wished she were really a servant. They were paid and they had time off now and then. She did not.

She was permitted to look after Stephen, but she was encouraged to begin weaning him as soon as possible.

“Children should not be nursed for too long,” Katherine said. “Life is too busy for that.”

Sybil’s constant busyness was Katherine’s fault, but Sybil was afraid to say so.

By the time her second Christmas at Lynmouth arrived, he was nearly seventeen months old, toddling energetically, and making his opinions felt in loud, indignant roars every time he fell down—which was fairly often—or was denied something to which he had taken a fancy, such as a shiny knife or a gold coin carelessly left on a table.

Both Katherine and Owen repeatedly told Sybil to make him behave and she tried, anxiously, but with little success. She had originally hoped that Idwal, who though younger than Sybil was certainly nearer to her in age than his parents were, might be a friend, but he frankly disliked both her and Stephen and if he could get either of them into trouble, he would.

When that second Christmas came, she wondered wistfully if this time there would be some contact with her own family, but there was not, although the weather was good and there was no bar to travelling. The Lanyons stayed in Lynmouth for their Yuletide revels. They let her share in them, but in a limited fashion. It was taken for granted that she would help to wait on the other guests and though Owen, rendered genial by Christmas good cheer, gave her permission to dance, Katherine watched to make sure that no unmarried man danced with her more than once.

The following spring, it was given out one Sunday in church that Queen Jane Seymour was with child, and the congregation were asked to pray for the birth of a healthy prince to be the heir to the kingdom. The Lanyons seemed pleased to hear the news and when they went home, Owen declared that they must have a special dinner to celebrate. “Kate, send someone out to buy a good haunch of something, and we’ll make an occasion of it.”

If Queen Jane did have a boy, Sybil thought, church bells would ring throughout the land. A boy child born to a queen was a marvel, a joy. A boy child born to Sybil Sweetwater might well be stronger, more handsome, cleverer, but he would never be regarded as anything but a mistake and was condemned as a nuisance when he bellowed. That night she cried herself to sleep.

She had done that before, of course, but this time her misery came from a new and greater depth. In the morning she brushed the best of her plain brown gowns, combed her fair hair back, put on a clean coif and went to speak to Master Owen.

Owen Lanyon was preparing for another foreign voyage, and his packed belongings were piled just inside the street door. Idwal was down at the ship, making sure that all was ready. They were to sail to Bristol and then leave for Venice in company with other ships, as a safeguard against pirates. Owen himself was in the small room he used as an office, writing, which he continued to do even after he had answered her timid knock with the call to enter.

Sybil closed the door behind her and stood hesitating, until at length he glanced around and said, “Sit down. I won’t be long. I’m writing to your brother, as it happens.”

“Is there any chance of…of me seeing him? I never have, not since I came here.” Sybil sat down nervously on the nearest stool.

“No, Sybil. There is not.” Owen sanded the letter and blew the sand off. “I’m just giving him some information, in haste, before I set off for Venice. I was in Dunster the other day and I heard some news that may interest your brother. Cleeve Abbey, near Washford, is going to be dissolved after all.”

“Oh,” said Sybil a little blankly.

“Come, now. You know, surely, that the English church has broken free from the Pope and that it has meant retribution at last for the monasteries which for so long have been places of scandal, as well as much too rich.” His sardonic tone suggested that he didn’t entirely sympathize with King Henry’s reforming zeal, or believe that its roots lay in a genuine desire for piety and morality.

Sybil said, “Oh, yes. Father Anthony Drew explained it to us. It was so the king could be free to marry Queen Anne. Only, she didn’t have a son and so…”

“Hush,” said Owen. “His Majesty has for many years been more and more shocked by the mismanagement of the church by Rome, and the sad laxity in the monasteries of England. Any other reason would be unthinkable. Anyway, it’s wiser not to comment on the king’s affairs, even in private, to members of one’s own family. It’s said that he has informers in many houses and who knows which? Never mind that now. The point is that the monks of Cleeve…you know where Cleeve and Washford are?”

“Yes, up the coast, to the east of Minehead. The monks are Cistercians.”