by Deryn Lake
Francis rose from a bow that he had practised painstakingly for months — ever since the King had first invited him to Court — to find Exeter’s unblinking gaze fixed upon him. It raced through Francis’s mind that, by some mystic power, the Marquess knew that he had spent the afternoon in Lucy’s bed and was thoroughly disapproving. He felt a flush begin to creep up his neck. And it was the King who came to his rescue.
‘Why, it’s young Weston,’ he said. ‘When did you arrive?’
‘Yesterday, your Grace.’
‘And how are you settling down?’
‘Very well, your Grace,’ and Francis blushed scarlet.
Harry Norris thought, ‘So Lady Lucy has won the wager. What wantons those girls are!’
‘Excellent,’ the King was saying. ‘And now to dine.’
The old custom of all who lived at Court eating with the King in his Hall had died out over recent years. Henry himself had set the fashion for courtiers to dine in their own lodgings by constantly feeding in the Privy Chamber with his personal attendants — a custom he much preferred — and only using the Hall for banquets, masques, and other state occasions. In private he felt he could be natural; take off his shoes; listen to his musicians and singers; play and sing himself. And when he sang love songs he could let his mind wander over the miles to Kent, to Hever Castle, to Anne, each note of his lute seeming to say her name to him. And if the expression on his face should grow soft with love, then there were only his private Gentlemen there to see and each was sworn to obey the Marquess of Exeter’s dictum: ‘You will not be curious about anything concerning His Grace.’
Then if he was not in the mood for music there were other diversions. Sometimes they would sit back and listen to Will Somers’s prattle; sometimes they would play cards — gambling all night and winning or losing vast sums. And this night it was to be Imperial and dice the King decided.
‘You play Imperial, young Weston?’
‘No, your Grace. I only know childish games which I played at home.’
‘Then it’s high time you learned. Come, sit with me. You shall be taught by the King of England himself and you will play the neatest card and throw the truest dice of all my Gentlemen before I’ve finished with you.’
And he put out his hand and ruffled Francis’s hair affectionately. Francis knew that he should have felt a warm glow, a grateful happiness, at a touch from the hand of his anointed sovereign, God’s divine choice on earth. But instead the most devastating shiver ran through him. Not the trembling that Ann or Lucy could cause but a ghastly, cold spasm as if he had been handled by something evil. It took every ounce of control he could muster not to actually shrink away from His Grace’s fingers. The effort was so great that he broke out in a sweat. He experienced stark terror for the second time in his life.
His mind flashed back five years and he saw again St Edward’s Well and the ghastly spectre that had looked at him with that wild empty stare. He had known with certainty then that he had seen a ghost. And now he felt the same ghastly chill. It was incomprehensible. The big, kindly King and that long dead woman; there was no sense to it.
Henry, seeing the boy sweating and shaking, was overcome with tenderness. To witness such evidence of emotion and loyalty was heartening in any circumstances. But with this child, son of his faithful servant Richard, it was doubly gratifying.
‘What a good lad you are,’ he said. ‘I say, Henry —,’ this to his cousin Exeter, ‘I’ll warrant we’ve found the best page yet to enter the Chamber. We must watch his progress. He’ll go far, you mark my words. Now, young Weston, to teach you the rules of Imperial.’
And so Francis sat down, gladly swallowing the wine that Henry Norris passed him, to play cards with Henry Tudor.
*
Anne Weston sat by an open window in Sutton Place, her head bent over the letter she was writing, her hand gripped firmly around the quill, the strokes of her pen quick and authoritative, belying the tremulous feelings she had within. For what woman — lest she be a widow — would dare take the matter of her daughter’s marriage plans into her own hands? Yet what other alternative was there? To let Catherine endure further months of depression and loneliness?
Leaning forward slightly she looked down into the garden below. There sat her daughter, golden head bent over the embroidery with which she constantly busied herself these days, while Giles, who was never far from Catherine’s side if he could help it, strummed on his lute singing as if his heart wasn’t really in it.
‘I am forced,’ Anne thought, ‘and Richard will just have to be made to understand. His tour of duty in Calais is a whole three months and I cannot see her go into a decline. If I can just get things begun — a meeting between herself and Arthur Culpepper. After that, of course, I can go no further. It is between Richard and the boy’s stepfather to make the arrangements. But it would cheer her so.’
And so she went on making excuses to herself, knowing full well that Richard would not be pleased by her boldness in writing to the stepfather of Catherine’s pre-contracted husband inviting both him and the boy to visit Sutton Place. But she had made up her mind and that was all there was to it. By the very same rider she would despatch another letter to Richard and he could puff and fume on the other side of the Channel to his heart’s content.
She completed the letter and addressed it in her decisive hand. ‘To Sir John Rogers, Bryanston, Dorset.’ She pressed her seal into the hot wax and the Weston crest, brought back by one of Sir Richard’s forefathers from the Crusades, stood out sharp and clear; a Saracen’s head with open eyes and lolling tongue and, beneath, the words ‘Any Boro’. It was family legend that the Crusader Weston had hacked off the man’s head and had borne it on his lance in triumph, where — open-eyed in death — it had kept watch over him.
Now came the more difficult task of writing to her husband, but, thinking back to the previous evening, she proceeded with determination. It had been after the simple meal — which she and Catherine had taken to eating in a small chamber in the Gate House wing — and while Giles had been entertaining them with a few quiet songs, that she had first noticed tears running silently down her daughter’s cheeks. The very silence of the weeping had been far more heart-rending than if the girl had burst out crying. It had cut Anne Weston deeply. Dismissing the Fool, she had crossed to Catherine and knelt beside her, cradling her into her arms.
‘Why, my sweetheart,’ she had said, ‘what ails you? Are you unwell?’
‘No, Mother, it is nothing.’
Anne had laughed.
‘Catherine, that is the answer given by those who mean “it is something”. Are you lonely, my darling? Is it that you miss Margaret and Francis?’
She had touched the raw nerve for now the tears came coursing hot and somehow sweet. Most delicately Anne had put her finger out and traced the pattern of one. How one suffered for one’s children — all their upsets a hurt; all their joys a triumph.
‘And is it that you, too, wish to leave Sutton Place? As a bride?’
‘Aye,’ came the whispered answer.
‘But, darling, why did you not speak of this before?’
‘I did not wish to leave you solitary. It is a very shadowy house at night.’
Now it was Lady Weston’s turn to cry.
‘But, sweetheart,’ she said, hugging the girl to her, ‘I can go to Calais with your father. The house can remain closed unless the family wish to use it. You kept silent about this for me?’
Catherine nodded her head.
‘Oh, my dear goose. Tomorrow morning I shall write to Sir John Rogers about his stepson, Arthur. There was a contract with him when you were a child.’
The tears had stopped flowing and the china blue eyes were now fixed firmly on Anne’s face.
‘Do you know him?’
‘I only met him once, very long ago. His real father was alive then.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He died of some illness and then Arthur
’s mother was remarried to Sir John Rogers, who has a great and beautiful estate in Dorset. But she died in childbed shortly afterwards.’
‘And you will write to him tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
A thought struck Anne Weston.
‘Is it not your seventeenth birthday in two weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then I shall invite them to come and stay with us for that.’
And so, explaining this scene as best she could to a man who could hardly be described as overladen with sentiment, Lady Weston completed her letter to her husband, sealed it down with a great show of determination and much pursing of the lips and gave it to her fastest rider.
‘And be sure to deliver Sir John Rogers’s letter well before you find a Calais-bound ship.’
The last thing she wanted was Richard taking it into his head to roar back and upset the arrangements.
Within eight days the rider had returned bearing with him a reply.
‘Right honourable and my singular Good Lady,’ she read, ‘in my heartiest manner I commend me to you. It will give my stepson and myself the greatest good cheer to attend upon your daughter, Catherine, on her anniversary and we are, at this very time, preparing for the journey. Therefore, it is our intention to be with you and yours on 25 or 26 June according to the speed which your humble servants do achieve in the journey.
‘May the Lord preserve your Ladyship and recommend me also to your good husband. At Bryanston this 17 day of June. Yours ever to command, J. Rogers.’
Sutton Place was at its best when full of people and now the usual hustle and bustle broke out. Lady Weston’s sewing woman sent for two young girls from the estate to help her as a sudden order for three new dresses for Catherine and two for her mistress was given. The maids were out in force, cleaning and scrubbing; the kitchen lads polished till their knives and pots shone sun-like on the shelves; the ostlers swept out the stables and cleaned the harnesses and even the horses while they were at it; Giles of Guildford wrote three new songs — a labour of love, for had not Catherine always been his little darling? — and a chamber in the east wing that had never been used was nicknamed Sir John Rogers’s room. Its large bed which had never been properly draped received yellow and red buckram hangings and a tester of yellow and green, and matching curtains were hung at the windows.
‘It simply cannot be done in time, my Lady. I take pride in my work and I will not tolerate bad stitchery.’
The sewing woman’s voice had risen to a tearful note but Lady Weston had calmed her down and sent for another four girls, known for their skills with the needle, to come up especially by cart from Guildford and stay at the mansion till everything — dresses, bed hangings, curtains and two new tablecloths for good measure — was completed to satisfaction.
At last it was the morning of 25 June — and a fine one at that — but by the evening a certain quietness was over the house as no sign of Sir John or Arthur Culpepper had appeared. Because of this delay the next morning saw servants, mistress and daughter at fever pitch. Catherine, who had worn blue the day before, decided on a new scarlet gown today, the very boldness of the colour giving her confidence. And though she walked moodily in the Long Gallery for most of the morning she saw at about noon, simultaneously with the gate housekeeper’s cry, a cavalcade of riders appear from Sutton Forest.
As she sped down the staircase into the Great Hall her mother was hurrying up it and, meeting in the middle, they laughed and embraced rather breathlessly.
‘Come, we must look composed,’ said Lady Weston. ‘Sit in that chair on the right of the Queen’s fireplace. No, no, do not. For the sun will dazzle your eyes. There, with your back to the stained glass. Yes, that is a splendid effect. Your hair is like spun gold. I shall stay here and embroider. How does that appear?’
‘Oh, Mother, most ridiculous,’ said Catherine with a laugh. ‘You’re holding it upside down.’
The clatter of hooves was in the quadrangle and the sound of dismounting. With livery gleaming Giles Coke stepped smartly forward and swung open the great door known as the Middle Enter. There was a whispered conversation and then he announced, ‘Sir John Rogers of Bryanston.’
Catherine was never to forget her first sight of her betrothed’s stepfather for though he was quite old, about thirty-two or three, he had the face of an impudent scamp, an adventurer. And he had all the charm to go with it for he bowed before Lady Weston, kissed her hand and said, ‘My Lady, how can I express my regret? My son Arthur was taken ill on the journey and had to turn back. That is why I was delayed. I was in two minds whether to accompany him but I decided to continue alone. At least we may meet and talk. Something I have been looking forward to since your letter arrived. And this must be his betrothed?’
And he bowed before Catherine who curtsied politely in turn, trying not to show her disappointment too greatly. But he must have sensed her reaction for he smiled and said, ‘I know I am but a poor substitute for Arthur but I bring you his greetings and good wishes and on your birthday you shall have his gifts.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Lady Weston, quite put about, ‘I do hope this visit won’t be too dull, Sir John. My husband is in Calais — as I explained — and my son is at Court. There are only the two of us here.’
‘And what better company could I ask for?’ and he bowed again.
Anne thought, ‘He is not at all what I expected. After all he is a man of estates and property, but he seems too — young. And far too ...’
She searched for the word in her head but the only one that suggested itself was ‘naughty’, and she rejected that angrily. But Giles Coke was stepping forward and leading Sir John to the chamber already named after him; while his retinue of servants were being shown their quarters by the yeoman and the butler.
His ablutions took him some while for the two women did not see him again until the midday repast at which he appeared, resplendent in an emerald green doublet, his dark, curly hair brushed and his face clean and glowing. He had very pleasant eyes, Lady Weston decided. Not so much grey as crystal in colour, yet not ice-like but warm and friendly and sparkling. She felt herself taking to him and wished that Catherine would say something. The foolish girl had sat with her eyes fixed firmly on her plate and hadn’t uttered a word since the meal had begun.
‘... and my wife died three years ago leaving me with my stepson, Arthur, who is eighteen now and a daughter of my own.’
For the first time Catherine spoke.
‘What do you call your daughter, Sir John?’
‘Alice.’
‘I think that a pretty name. Is she a good child?’
‘Aye, as good as any little maid can be who has no mother and is surrounded by servants.’
‘And how old is she?’
‘Three. My wife died in childbed.’
‘Oh yes, my mother mentioned. I’m sorry.’
A ripple crossed Sir John Rogers’s face as if he was on the point of making some remark but he merely said, ‘Yes.’
Anne Weston thought, ‘I’m sure that Culpepper woman he married was a middle-aged harridan. I am positive it was she I met at Court once and took a dislike to on the instant. I believe she had a sister-in-law called Joyce who married Lord Edmund Howard, Norfolk’s brother.’
Aloud she said, ‘Are you not connected to the Howards, Sir John?’
‘My wife was. Her first husband’s sister married the Duke’s brother. But I make no such pretensions.’
So she was right. Joyce Culpepper had been a widow with children when she married Edmund Howard and her brother’s widow had also chosen a younger man. But how could such a disagreeable creature have managed to snare such a delightful person as Sir John Rogers? Anne Weston sighed. She supposed it to have been parental pressure, as usual.
Catherine was saying, ‘Does Alice live with you, Sir John?’
‘Of course. She is my jewel. I could not farm her out to my mother or sister. Are you fond of children, Mistress Catherin
e?’
Catherine went pink and said, ‘Yes.’
Again Sir John looked slightly uncomfortable as he said, ‘Then let us hope you and Arthur have a large family.’
Catherine lowered her lashes demurely and Lady Weston cleared her throat but Sir John seemed unaware that he was perhaps speaking a trifle too forthrightly.
‘I drink to you, Catherine,’ he said and he raised his glass to her.
That afternoon the fine June weather broke in a thunderstorm and Sir John, at his own request, strolled gently up and down the Long Gallery — which entranced him — talking to Catherine. Lady Weston, much to her chagrin, fell asleep in a chair and was unable to join in the conversation.
Preparing her young mistress for dinner that night Catherine’s personal maid was astonished to hear her say, ‘Meg, which of all my gowns makes me look the oldest?’
‘The oldest, Mistress?’
‘Aye.’
‘Well I think, of them all, your night gown of black velvet which you had for the mourning when your aunt died.’
‘But do I look pretty in it too?’
‘What’s all this about?’ asked Meg suspiciously.
‘Oh, we have Sir John Rogers staying here ...’
‘I know that. We’ve had nothing but his visit for the last two weeks.’
‘... and he is very old and so is my mother and I didn’t want to feel left out.’
‘And what about young Arthur then?’
‘He was taken sick.’
‘Oh! So how old is this Sir John? I caught a glimpse of him and he looked lively enough to me.’
‘Oh, I know not.’ Catherine’s voice was too casual by half, thought Meg. ‘In his thirties.’
‘I suppose that would seem like a man’s dotage when you’re only seventeen.’