Sutton Place (Sutton Place Trilogy Book 1)

by Deryn Lake

  ‘I rode over this morning. How do you feel? You have become even thinner.’

  ‘Aye, a veritable bag of bones indeed. If the King were to see me now I wonder what he would think.’

  Jane, who had inherited some of her poetic brother’s imagination, had a none too pleasant mental picture of Henry crushing her friend’s fragile body beneath his in an ecstasy of lust. She wondered if Anne had yet shared His Grace’s bed for, close a companion as she might be, it was not the way of Mistress Boleyn to discuss such matters. Her eyes always had a slightly secretive look and her face could indeed grow dark if she were ever pressed to reveal information.

  ‘A curious girl,’ thought Jane, ‘not like other people. I wonder if she has any weaknesses at all.’

  If she had been in the room but five minutes before and witnessed Anne weep for her lost love she would not have credited what she saw.

  ‘I think, Anne,’ said Jane, answering her earlier question, ‘he would love you if you were almost a skeleton. His Grace worships you to the point of distraction.’

  Anne nodded gloomily.

  ‘’Tis true enough.’

  Jane laughed and said, ‘They say he is bewitched by you.’

  Anne made a contemptuous sound.

  ‘They can roast in hell. They would ruin everything. I will not tolerate they, Jane. As far as I am concerned it is I who count.’

  Jane Wyatt thought, ‘How dangerous she is. She cares for nobody but herself. Poor Queen Katharine!’ And then a ridiculous idea came into mind for she caught herself thinking ‘poor King Henry!’

  To lighten the atmosphere she said, ‘There is a very odd young man downstairs who says he wishes to see you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He states his name is Dr Zachary and he is sometimes at Court where he believes you may have noticed him. He looks a veritable rag bag to me. A great mass of hair and a black cloak and exceedingly travel stained.’

  She did not add that as she had walked past him in the small Hall at Hever she had never in her life felt such a wave of power emanate from anyone. So strongly had it affected her that she had turned to look at him again, breaking the rules of good behaviour, only to find a pair of strangely beautiful amber eyes smiling at her.

  Anne frowned for a second and then laughed.

  ‘Oh, the astrologer. Yes, he is very popular. He reads the stars for many at Court. It is said he is related to my mother’s family — the Howards. Though a bastard, of course.’

  ‘Will you see him?’

  ‘Why not indeed? Brush my hair, Jane, and wash my face. Let us find out what he wants.’

  ‘I sent a servant to him for he looks as if he’s travelled far.’

  ‘Good. I think this could be amusing for I’m sure that he is a fraud.’

  Inexplicably Jane was annoyed.

  ‘Why should he be? Truly, Anne, I think at times you are too harsh.’

  The black eyes flickered over her cousin but without malice.

  ‘Yes, I suppose I am,’ she said wearily, leaning back against her pillows. ‘But it is the world that makes us so, Jane. We are all born in as guileless babes. It is life’s cruelty that is the great corrupter.’

  Jane was silent. She simply did not, and knew that she never would, understand her black-haired cousin who could make men fawn at her feet and yet had no particular good looks; who seemed so exuberant and yet so sad; who was a strange mixture of so many things that it was hard to find out what she was really like at all.

  She picked up the thick tresses in her hands and started to brush them. The bones of Anne’s skull showed as the hair parted across the middle.

  ‘In that small space,’ thought Jane, ‘is the subtle brain that will decide the future of England. Dear God, it looks such a little thing!’

  She was glad when the knock came to the door to disturb her disquieting thoughts.

  ‘Enter,’ called Anne, and there in the entrance, looking somewhat cleaner than when he had first arrived but still rather wild, was the young man Jane had met in the Hall. He bowed.

  ‘My name is Dr Zachary,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I have heard of you,’ answered Anne. ‘You are an astrologer and soothsayer I believe.’

  ‘I have the gift of second sight. And I do read the stars. But that was not why I came, Mistress Anne. I am also a herbalist and I know you have been sick with the Sweat. I have brought a tonic to strengthen you. For that is all you need now. Dr Butts has done well, for you were perilously ill at one point.’

  ‘And how do I know it is not poison?’ said Anne laughing. ‘I have numerous enemies now that the Cardinal comes from Rome to question the legality of His Grace’s marriage.’

  Many men would have looked furious but Zachary merely shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Whether you drink it or not is entirely your decision, Mistress. I made it to help you but there are those incapable of accepting help when it is offered.’

  ‘Come,’ she said, ‘I did not mean to offend you. Pour me a draught, Jane, and I will take it now to show my good faith. Sit down Dr Zachary and forgive my rudeness. As you know, I have been ill and I forget myself.’

  Aware that his eyes were following her every move Jane Wyatt took the leather bottle that Zachary handed to her and poured a good measure into a glass. The liquid was clear and golden and smelt of wild flowers. Anne drank it in one mouthful and almost immediately her eyes seemed to grow heavy with sleep.

  ‘Well, astrologer,’ she said, ‘I feel rested even now. My limbs are getting heavy.’

  ‘In a few minutes you will fall into a deep sleep,’ he said. ‘And when you wake I want you to drink some more. And when you wake again I want you to repeat the action. In this way you will sleep for four days. After that you must eat as much strengthening food as you can and then you will be able to return to Court in August, when the sickness will have left London.’

  The pupils of Anne’s eyes were dilating as she looked at him but she said dreamily, ‘And what is to be my fate, astrologer? Will I return in triumph?’

  ‘In great triumph, mistress. To your own house in the Strand, with gardens that go down to the riverbank.’

  ‘How well that sounds. But what then, Zachary, what then?’

  She was practically asleep.

  ‘In five years time,’ he whispered, ‘the crown of England will be put upon your head.’

  Her eyelids fluttered but there was no other indication that she had heard him. Her breathing was deep and even and she seemed in a sound sleep. Zachary read Jane Wyatt’s mind and laughed.

  ‘Nay, I did not poison her,’ he said. ‘I am a cousin of hers and I once thought I loved her.’

  Jane blushed and cursed herself for a fool.

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ he said. ‘It was when I saw you that I knew I loved her no more. For you are so familiar to me. I have often seen you though until this moment never with my actual eyes.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Jane.

  ‘Perhaps this will explain,’ answered Zachary Howard and taking her in his arms he gave her a kiss of such passion that she would have fallen down if he had not been holding her.

  ‘Will you be my wife?’ he said.

  ‘Happily,’ answered Jane, quite regardless of the fact that less than an hour before they had been total strangers.

  *

  The Sweating Sickness had passed and from various temporary residences the Court was reassembling.

  Zachary, after tarrying in Kent a few days with Jane Wyatt, had returned to Cordwainer Street in the middle of July even though the pestilence was not quite over. Before he left he had persuaded her into marriage by Romany rite, taking her into the forest that surrounded Hever, drawing blood from both their hands and then binding them together. Even while the handkerchief was still on them he had consummated their love out there in the Kentish woods, the sun on their naked bodies, her cries of pain and pleasure mingling with the call of the birds. And he, like a wild creature hims
elf, carnal and thrusting until she was finally his.

  ‘Tell Mistress Anne that you will come with her to London as a member of her household,’ he said, as they parted on the edge of the wood, he leaning down from his saddle to kiss her.

  ‘And if she does not agree?’

  ‘She will agree.’

  Riding back to her father’s house, her virginity gone, her hand still throbbing from the nick that Zachary had made in it with his knife, the gently raised Jane Wyatt wondered if she had taken leave of her senses.

  *

  The King, accompanied by George Boleyn and a few other courtiers, set forth from Hunsdon Manor at the end of the month when he was utterly sure that the Sweat had passed.

  He thought, ‘Each step of this beast brings me nearer to my sweetheart who, vexatious creature, refuses me still. And yet I will not break my vow to myself. I would rather stay celibate than have another woman.’

  Aloud he said to Henry Norris, ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

  ‘You are a widower. Have you ever had long spells of — er — abstinence?’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. I once waited three years before taking a trollop.’

  ‘And did you find — forgive me — that the celibacy had affected you in any way?’

  ‘No, Your Grace. I was a little uncontrolled, that is all.’

  Both Norris and George Boleyn, riding within earshot, knew exactly what this was all about. The King had not made a nocturnal visit to Katharine’s apartments for nearly two years and Norris, in his privileged position, knew for sure that Anne Boleyn was refusing Henry her bed. George grinned to himself.

  ‘So he fears losing his potency,’ he thought. ‘He’ll go madder than ever to have Anne if that’s in his head.’

  *

  At Sutton Place, Francis and Ann Pickering were locked in an intimate embrace. She was glad that they were in the house with people around them for today, as they were saying farewell, she felt she might have given in and in fact was about to do so when she was saved by the sound of Lady Weston’s approaching feet. Francis made a headlong plunge to hide under the bed.

  As the door opened Ann was to be found sitting nonchalantly enough before the window striving as usual to get her red curls into some semblance of order. Lady Weston, however, was not altogether fooled for her quick eye had noticed a slight movement of the bed’s hangings.

  ‘Oh, Ann,’ she said in an extra loud voice, ‘if you see Francis tell him to come at once. His horse is saddled and ready and he must start off now to reach London before nightfall.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Weston,’ the girl answered, rising and bobbing a curtsey.

  As soon as the door closed Francis reappeared, somewhat dusty.

  ‘Did she suspect?’

  ‘Aye, so go quickly.’

  So with one last kiss they went separately to the courtyard where Ann, running to the top of the Gate House tower, waved and waved till he had vanished into a black dot.

  And so — with Queen Katharine stitching patiently away at her embroidery; the King striding restlessly through the corridors; Cardinal Wolsey working into the hours before dawn on The King’s Great Matter, as the separation from the Queen had come to be known; the Duke of Norfolk taking up residence in his London home and listening with an appreciative smile to his son Zachary’s description of his Romany wedding; and Francis Weston running around the tennis court with Henry Norris — the actors were in place. All of them waiting for that little dark girl to leave the woods and fields of Kent and take the dusty road to London — and to destiny.

  10

  ‘He’s dying,’ said Dr Burton flatly. ‘There is nothing I can do for him. He may live another month, two perhaps.’ He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ‘That’s the way of it.’

  Anne Weston sat down more hurriedly than she had intended.

  ‘But why? He has had such a healthy life. Most of it out of doors till he came to live with us. How could a man like that be struck down?’

  Dr Burton looked at her, sighing slightly.

  ‘God in his mercy alone can know, Lady Weston. Who is to say why cankers eat away at a man apparently hearty, while others of puny, bloodless mien are spared. All I can tell you is that death is at work in your Fool, madam, and that he must prepare his soul for immortality.’

  ‘Poor Giles, he has always been so harmless.’

  ‘It is never easy to lose a good servant,’ said Dr Burton, matter-of-factly. He had long since dismissed emotion when it came to his work. As a youth, shortly after taking the Hippocratic Oath, he had wept for the dead, rejoiced when a sickly babe survived, felt personal gratification for every cure that resulted from his care. But now he had changed. It was impossible to maintain personal involvement with one’s patients and remain of balanced mind. The best he could hope for was to learn more. Eleven years before — in 1518 — the College of Physicians had been founded and he had been one of the first to join. There, pooling his knowledge with others, he had realized that if he was to serve he must look on the human race as so much meat; dissociate himself from suffering the better to alleviate it.

  ‘He was more than a servant, he was a friend.’

  Dr Burton made a tutting sound and reached into the wooden chest that his servant carried for him on his visits.

  ‘Let him drink this physic three times daily. It will not help the disease but it will soften the pain. As the end draws nearer I will strengthen the compound.’

  ‘God’s life, what a cold-hearted creature the man is,’ thought Anne. ‘He speaks of death as another would talk of ending a visit. Yet in a hundred years,’ she pondered, ‘who will know what I was? Or who will care? And though Giles of Guildford — known as the Fool — gave pleasure to so many with his capers and singing he’ll not be remembered or wept for by those that are yet unborn. Oh, how wickedly shallow is the whole stuff of creation.’

  ‘... and keep him in bed,’ Dr Burton was saying. ‘The more he rests, the more slowly the disease will spread. His days as a Fool are over, I fear. Best to look for a new one.’

  ‘Aye,’ she answered wearily. ‘I’ll inform my husband.’

  ‘In Calais, is he?’

  Dr Burton was now making the small talk of all practised physicians as they prepare to leave.

  ‘No, his Treasurership ended last Michaelmas. Had you not heard?’

  ‘In truth I hadn’t, Lady Weston; I so rarely see you. A hardy family.’

  She smiled albeit faintly, for her thoughts were full of Giles. ‘No, he is now Under-Treasurer of England and has returned to Court.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed. A great honour for Sir Richard. Please pass on my congratulations. Well, his statecraft will be needed. These are turbulent times.’

  Even country doctors like Burton knew that the Pope’s Legate — Cardinal Campeggio — had arrived in England during the previous autumn to hear the case for the annulment of the King’s marriage. It also seemed to him, though he was no Court politician and had no experience of state matters, that the Cardinal must have received instructions from a higher authority to procrastinate. For it was only now — the summer of 1529 — that the Legate Court was finally in session. Furthermore, so rumour said, Mistress Boleyn had been sent from her fine lodgings to Hever Castle in a bitter mood. Dr Burton smiled thinly. What men would do for the urge within them to possess a woman. He wondered if the King ever did obtain his desired end and marry Mistress Anne, whether he would find her so different from the Queen when he got her between the sheets. Younger, thinner, more vivacious — yes. But actually different?

  ‘Will you call again next week, Dr Burton?’ Lady Weston was saying.

  ‘If it will make your mind easy, madam. But there is nothing I can do in truth.’

  It was with a sad heart that she sat in her little chamber in the Gate House wing after he had left. Sutton Place without Giles was an unbearable thought. And yet, she supposed, his strange weakness of late had put the idea in her head t
hat one day they would have to do without him. But not so cruelly soon for the man was not old. Why, his face hadn’t altered at all since the day she had first met him. But then people with those crinkly, ugly looks seemed timeless. She had always imagined, without consciously thinking about it, that Giles had not changed since he was a child. And the idea of a little boy with bright blue eyes, big teeth and hair cut as round as a basin made her smile despite all.

  The knock on her door made her jump a little for she was far away. Back in Sutton Park, by the ruins of the old manor house, one summer’s day eight years ago, watching a strange figure come striding out of the woods with all its worldly goods on its back. Giles, the strolling player, the Romany storyteller, come to look over the new Lord and Lady of the Manor.

  ‘Come in,’ she called.

  And there he was. Dressed and risen from his sick bed, his face still bearing that awful parchment colour it had had for the last few months. But for all that attempting his toothy grin.

  ‘Giles!’ she remonstrated. ‘What are you doing? Dr Burton left the strictest instructions that you need to rest in order to ...’ Her tongue slurred slightly over the deception, ‘... to make a quick recovery.’

  He put on the blank expression that he always adopted in any kind of difficulty. Only this time at the back of his eye was a ‘very-well-if-you-must’ look.

  ‘Well, my Lady,’ he said. ‘It is difficult for me to lie still in any sort of comfort. I am, by nature, a restless creature and in truth I am more unhappy lying down — unless I am drunken or asleep, of course — than standing up. Therefore if my Lady would permit me to sit when I am weary ...’

  Furious with herself for her thoughtlessness Anne motioned him to the chair opposite hers.

  ‘... then I think you will find that I will recover better. Standing or sitting is my preference, my Lady.’

  Anne hesitated.

  ‘But Dr Burton did say ...’

  ‘Ah well, that was for his usual kind of patient, my Lady. We Romanies are a different breed.’

  There was a silence. Anne could, as his mistress, order him to stay in his chamber but in God’s name if the man was dying surely he should be allowed to do what made him happiest.