Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  That was what sang from my heart, what beat from my heels. The understanding of death. Realisation of life.

  There was desperation in it. I do not attempt to deny it. There was something frantic in my blood at times. Sometimes, I could barely greet my teacher before asking to begin. Music and dance, they were my crutch, like my grandmother’s cane; the only thing that held me up.

  “Beautiful,” Manox cried as I finished singing one day. “You have such a faithful voice.”

  Manox praised me, and this was sweet. To someone who feels lost, attention can be an anchor, holding you to the earth.

  *

  “They say she is kind and gentle,” said Alice.

  I looked away, but said nothing. When people spoke of the new Queen, I felt sick, but I could not help hear. Queen Jane was meek, mild… in every way my cousin’s opposite, which was, they said, why the King had married her. Tired of an unconventional woman, he had taken one more conventional than rain in England.

  Others had done well, too. Norfolk had survived, largely by betraying my cousin. Her father, Thomas, had not been arrested, but soon lost his position of Lord Privy Seal to Cromwell. Cromwell also became a baron, and his son Gregory married Elizabeth Seymour, sister to the Queen.

  Queen Jane was lower born than my cousin, or me. The daughter of Sir John Seymour of Wulfhall, Jane was twenty-seven, and everyone said she had no beauty. She was pale, small and fair of hair, but my cousin, who had been poorly rated in the ranks of beauties at court, had been prettier than this Jane.

  “It is her submission,” said Kat. “That is what the King likes.”

  I understood. Submission was what we maids used as a shield to hold men at bay. A giggle here, turning your head away, standing back… it was acknowledging the man was your superior in sex and strength, and hoping by making him see this, that he would not press for something you wanted not.

  Some women in the maidens’ chamber used submission to draw men to them, to promise marriage. Submitting to a man when a promise was made sealed the deal, or was supposed to. As long as he liked you, it worked. If not, one ended up discarded, like Dorothy.

  Another discarded woman was having problems that season. My uncle of Norfolk was sent to bring the Lady Mary into line. People said it was a test of his loyalties. Lady Mary had thought that with Anne’s death her father would restore her to the succession as his legitimate heir and repair his links to Rome. Mary thought now the heretical witch was dead, all would be well. She thought wrong.

  Norfolk went to her to extract submission. Mary was to admit her father was Head of the Church, accept her diminished position, and accept her father and mother had never been married. My uncle was the perfect man to dispatch; he had no love for disobedient women.

  But Lady Mary held her nerve, and refused to sign the Oath of Succession. She remained Catholic, and to be Catholic was, to the King, to be a traitor.

  “The King thinks it blasphemy to deny his title as Head of the Church,” my aunt said to my grandmother.

  “It is already high treason,” said Agnes.

  “But he would have all men know he is God’s instrument,” said my aunt. “He rules by divine right. His daughter is not only committing treason, she is questioning his sacred power as King. He will not have that.”

  The King was enraged when my uncle failed to bully Lady Mary into submission, and swore he would send his daughter to the Tower. Everyone believed him. Why should they not? He had only just beheaded the woman he had sworn he loved above all others, along with most of his close friends.

  Fearing for her life, Chapuys told Lady Mary to sign. Mary wrote a letter to her father, acknowledging him as Supreme Head of the Church. She accepted her parents’ marriage had never been. It was humiliating, but necessary. This was how she would survive.

  She was rewarded. The King called her to court, and presented her with money. She met the Queen, who gave her a diamond ring. But it cost the former Princess a great deal. People said she was never the same again.

  And as all this went on, monasteries were falling. Reports were sent to Cromwell, and men were sent to investigate. If found to be corrupt, a house would be stripped of its goods, its monks and nuns disbanded, its treasures carted off to the King. Many people watched in stupefied disgust and terror. For centuries these houses had stood, the most prominent marks on the landscape, centres of religious and everyday life, and now in an instant they were gone. Raw hurt and horror flowed on the words of those who passed these tales on. People were losing their livelihoods, their places of worship… to some, it was like losing God.

  And the King was profiting from it. All the hospitals, schools, all that had been promised would come when the King had this money seemed to have vanished. Dead as my cousin were those dreams. But the King was unpredictable to all, now. Hostile silence was upon England, everyone waiting to see what would happen next.

  “At least the Queen’s family are not bent on making trouble,” said Norfolk when he visited.

  “The Seymours are not too hungry for power?” asked my grandmother.

  “Hungry enough, but content to play friends, for now,” replied my uncle. “Edward has been made a member of the Council, and Thomas, the younger one, is with the King at all times. It is the elder we need watch. The younger Seymour is a brash fool, with no more brains in his head than I have fingers in my shoes. But the elder… he is a cool player, collected, careful. But until the Queen becomes pregnant, they know they are not secure. That is why they are eager to make friends.”

  “Because they saw one Queen fall.”

  “And they know their sister must produce, or go the same way.”

  Norfolk distanced himself from Anne in public, but in my grandmother’s chambers it was made clear he knew the Queen had died an innocent woman.

  “You are to pass on nothing,” said my grandmother when he had gone.

  “I understand, Your Grace,” I said. “This is a dangerous time for us still.”

  She nodded. “It is.”

  “If Queen Jane has no child, my lady, will the King come to hate her?”

  “You mean will he get rid of her?”

  I inclined my head and my grandmother nodded. “The failure of two Queens is before us, child. Only the production of a living son will keep a queen safe.”

  “Do you think she knows?”

  “I think she is painfully aware.” My grandmother sighed. “Believe not all these tales of her modesty and calm. That woman accepted the King’s hand on the day your cousin died, perhaps before. Thrust into this by her family and Cromwell she might have been, and I doubt not her options were limited, but she understood she was replacing your cousin, and unlike Anne when Katherine was sent away Jane knew her acceptance would lead to Anne’s death.”

  Agnes stared into my eyes. “It takes a certain kind of person to agree to such a thing. A certain kind of detachment. Queen Jane may look like a mouse, but there is a hawk underneath that downy coat. And she is clever enough to hide that. Her mind might have aided her so far, but now her body must not fail. She has little else to recommend her, for she has no beauty and no spirit. The King has always liked women with fire in their souls. Jane has played a part with no flames to light her, make her dazzling, so if she wants to stay on that throne she must produce an heir.”

  “And if she does not, my lady?”

  “Another Queen may find herself in the Tower.”

  As for the other children of the King, my cousin, Princess Elizabeth was a princess no more, but a bastard like Lady Mary. Her governess, Lady Bryan, was soon writing to court, telling Cromwell her charge had no clothes, as she had grown out of them all. Having known was it was to be without clothes that fit your back, I pitied this tiny girl. She was not quite three and her mother was dead, put to death by her father.

  “They say the King will make Fitzroy his heir,” said Joan one night.

  “But the Duke of Richmond is a bastard,” said Kat.

  “S
o are all the King’s children,” Joan pointed out, “and Fitzroy is at least a boy.”

  But if the King was planning this, God thwarted him. That summer, Fitzroy died. We did not hear of it for some time. It was kept quiet. My uncle said he had died of consumption, but whispered to my grandmother there were many who thought poison the true agent.

  “Poisoned by whom?” she whispered back. “Lady Mary?”

  “Say nothing,” said he, “but there are rumours it was the King himself.”

  “For what reason would he murder his own son? Just weeks ago he was arguing to have him made his heir in Parliament.”

  “And just weeks ago there was rumour that Richmond was gathering men to take the throne,” whispered Norfolk. “Cromwell told the King that if he elevated Fitzroy it would bring trouble. My son-in-law had support in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, and in those regions are many who are not merry with the religious changes. If Richmond was planning something, and Cromwell caught sight of it, the King may well have moved against his son.”

  “I still cannot believe it. That boy was his pride and joy.”

  “Richmond was not without ambition. Perhaps he thought he might not gain the throne through his father, and worked to take it for himself.”

  “And this is why his funeral was a secret?”

  “Aye… although the King bore down on me for keeping it so.”

  “I thought the orders came from the King?”

  “They did.” My uncle sighed. “But the King finds it easy, these days, to blame everything on someone else. I wonder if that knock on the head before that woman died did not destabilise his mind. He seems often without sense, and is constantly paranoid.”

  The King is mad? I thought. It would certainly explain much, but was no good thing for England. I could not understand why the King would murder his son, but I had not understood why he had killed my cousin, either. When all this became too much for me to understand, I went into my music.

  “Wonderful!” Manox beamed as I came to the end of a song on the lute. I blinked, looking around. I had forgotten where I was, and that he was there, as I sang.

  “There is such an old soul in your fresh voice,” he said. “Truly, you are one of the best pupils ever I trained.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  “Call me Henry, when we are alone,” he said, smiling and adding a conspiratorial wink. Master Barnes was not there that day. I was supposed to have another woman with me, but when I had arrived Manox had turned down my suggestion that I fetch another maid. I felt safe with him, and he was my tutor. Elders were to be obeyed.

  “Before your grandmother, I must be your teacher,” he said, “but in here we will be friends.” He tapped his finger to his lips. “It will be our secret.”

  I smiled. There had been times of late when I had thought I might transform into petals, and drift away on the wind, for the ground beneath my feet was not solid anymore. All light was fading to darkness. I did not understand the world. My heroes were dead and I felt alone. But when I was with Manox, I did not feel that way. Had I been more experienced, I would have understood Manox was not the cause of this, but the dance and the music. That was what kept me grounded. But at that time, it was hard to separate one from the other.

  It often is, when you are young and naive.

  And when he told me to keep secrets, I did. I understood the wealth of secrets. They are precious. They keep friends safe. Secrets made my friends in the maidens’ chamber powerful. They were good. Everyone kept them.

  There is something enchanting about secrets. The thought you know something others do not. And he was older than me. I was flattered he wanted to be my friend, for I had, for a long time, wished to be seen as an adult, as a woman rather than a girl.

  But I did not see. I did not realise it was preparation; preparing me to keep secrets that would harm me, and aid him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Chesworth House

  Summer - Autumn 1536

  It started with little things: a word of praise here, a little present there; a smile, a touch on a hand or on my shoulder; calling each other by our Christian names. When I danced, he would dance with me, putting his hand lightly on mine, or on my waist as he lifted me for leaps. When I played, he would stand behind me, close, to aid me.

  He crept a little closer every day.

  As Master Barnes slept, head lolling on his chest, we smiled and talked as friends. When he was awake, we made faces behind his back. When my grandmother sharply scolded me for a slipped note, or foot, Manox would be behind her, looking on with sympathy. When she was gone, he would praise me.

  Sometimes, we were alone. If Master Barnes did not come, Manox never sent for another girl to sit with me. I did not tell anyone we were alone at times. I thought it would get my friend into trouble.

  Our friendship was a secret. It had to be, he said, for it was common for tutors to beat their charges, and if they did not they were seen as spoiling the child. He would never beat me, he said. He would not harm me. Having received what I often felt was more than my fair share of willow-whip thrashings and clips about the ear, this was a wonderful thing to be told. Manox meant to keep me safe.

  “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because you are special,” he replied.

  He made me feel special. Since we were friends, he said, we must greet each other as friends. When I came to the classroom and Barnes was there, we greeted in the usual way with a curtsey from me and a short bow from my tutors. When we were alone, we greeted as friends, with a kiss. It was just a swift, careful peck, but it was a sign of friendship. When we were alone, we would hold hands, for that was what friends did, he said.

  And each time something happened, he told me not to tell my grandmother.

  “She would not like us being friends,” he said, his hair, always a little greasy, tumbling into his eyes. “And she might blame you, Catherine, for you are higher in station, and so are supposed to hold yourself away from friendship with lesser people.”

  “I do not think you a lesser person,” I said, anxious to ensure my friend knew I cared for him.

  “That is sweet to hear,” he said, kissing my hand. “But still, do not say, for it will get you into trouble, and perhaps me too.”

  I told myself secrets were good. They would keep us safe, and happy.

  He asked Dorothy to bring me little presents; a wildflower he had found, a small pouch of sweetmeats, a ribbon for my hair. I was touched.

  He was not my ideal of a gallant and I did not think of him like that, but I felt warm when I thought of him, as though there was a glowing fire he had lit in my heart.

  Dorothy smiled when she handed his gifts to me, and put her finger to her lips as Manox had done. She thought it a game of courtly love, for Manox was much older than me, but far below me in status. She, like me, did not think it would come to anything. I was too young to see his games for what they were. I thought I was being courted in a romantic, platonic sense, like ladies at court, like women in tales of chivalry.

  I did not see how insidious it was.

  Manox was with me when he could be. At first, I was grateful, thinking he was the only one who thought of me at this time. I was vulnerable, and not only for my age. My cousin dead, my father sick, my grandmother distracted, I was lost and wanted to be found. My other friends kept me on the edge of their circle, and Kat was spending more time with Joan than me. I was always not quite a part of their inner group. With Manox, I belonged to something, to someone. I was seen.

  He asked me to meet him outside of the classroom, and I agreed. I had no reason to distrust Manox. None at all.

  We talked in quiet places and he told me of his life. He was lonely, he said, glad to have me as a friend. Perhaps it should have seemed odd that a man so old would need a young girl as a friend, but it did not. We were bonded, he said, by music. No one else saw the promise in me. No one else saw what I would become.

  It was amazing to think he ha
d seen this in me, and whilst something in me sang for joy, another part was humbled, grateful.

  I felt sorry for him, for he seemed like me; lost and alone. And he flattered me, telling me I was the prettiest girl at Chesworth.

  In dark corners, he brought me to him, lured with the promise of a pretty ribbon, or saying he had a secret to share. Excited, at first, to have something no one else knew of, something that was just mine, I met him, and at first nothing made me uncomfortable, but that soon changed.

  One day, we met in the orchard in secret. As we walked, he stopped abruptly, and drew me to him. I thought he meant to hug me, as he had often before, but then I found his lips close to mine.