Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  “Just a kiss,” he murmured, his arms holding me tight. “I love you, Catherine. To be near you is torture.”

  Stumbling backwards against a tree, I felt panic rise in my heart. I knew not why, except that his arms were so tight, so fierce. I turned my face so when he kissed me it fell on my cheek. When he had kissed me, he stepped back. I was confused. I had not thought he wanted more than friendship. And suddenly there was fear in me. I knew not why, for he had never done anything to make me uncomfortable until that moment, and all he had taken was a kiss on the cheek, but there was something rising in me, warning me. I felt ill at ease as he reached out to caress my face.

  “Please,” he said. “Tell no one of this. It would harm you, and I would not have that.”

  I was confused, for he had kissed me, not I him, but I nodded. Women were always to blame.

  And after that first kiss, there were more.

  When I came to play music, I would sit on my stool and he came close, much closer than before. No more could I lose myself in music, for he was there, pulling me back to the world. I became uncomfortable, but knew not what to do, as it often seemed as though he was only doing it so he might show me how move my fingers on the strings.

  Sometimes he would put his hand beneath my breasts, just starting to bud under my clothes, pushing in my belly to bring a greater sound from me as I sang. But fingers strayed, seeking out my nipples, brushing a finger across them. When this happened, I froze. Should I have shouted, called for aid? I knew not if what he was doing was an accident, and the fear of saying something and being wrong was upon me as a shroud. I would get my friend into trouble, and might be accused of being a false, hysterical woman. I told myself it was an accident, but the more it happened, the harder it was to believe that.

  I did not like his touch, did not like those straying, wandering hands, but if I shied away, he would just smile as though nothing had happened.

  It confused me. I felt there was something wrong, but he did not act like a villain. Some of the time he did not try to touch me at all. Oftentimes we simply talked. I would come to think I had imagined him sneaking upon me.

  But bit by bit and piece by piece, something was dawning. He wanted more… more than I wanted to offer.

  When he tried to kiss me, I blamed myself. Women led men astray, so I must have done this to him. I must have. Had I not wanted a gallant to say kind words and bring me presents? I had wished this upon myself.

  But Manox was not the man I wanted. I knew not who that man was, but it was not this man of nearly forty years with fumbling hands and a sweaty top lip. The men who came to the women’s chamber asked the maids for kisses and caresses. Manox did not ask. He took. But each taking was so strange, sometimes presented as friendship and at others as accidents, that I knew not what was going on. He had said he loved me, but perhaps even that was a mistake on my part, and he simply meant as a friend. That was all I wanted of him.

  But he held secrets. I came to learn that secrets are not always shields. Sometimes, they are swords.

  *

  It was around this time that the Ten Articles of faith were proclaimed. The King, knowing his people were confused on faith and that dissent was rife, declared what articles of faith we were now to follow. The Holy Scriptures and three Creeds were the basis of Christian faith, and baptism remained necessary. Penance was vital for salvation and the body and blood of Christ were present in the Host. Confession was necessary, but good works were important too for a soul to be saved. Images and statues were useful, as they reminded people of God, but they were not icons of worship. Saints were to be honoured, and could intercede with God. Ceremonies were to be observed for they were vital for devotion and held mystical significance. Prayers for the dead were good, but papal pardons and indulgences were not, and soul-masses were not required.

  It was, in truth, a baffling list, less radical than it was conservative. It pleased no one.

  “The King appears to be running backwards, towards the Catholic faith,” said my aunt Katherine.

  “He never left,” said Agnes.

  *

  One day, when Barnes was away with a gripe in the belly, I finished dancing and found myself in Manox’s arms. I knew not how I had got there. He must have been standing behind me and had caught me as I, lost in music, had spun and turned at the close. He kissed me, pulling me so hard against him that my teeth ground against his.

  “Stop,” I said, trying to pull free, but he was stronger than me. He did not stop until he wanted to, and when he released my lips, did not release my body.

  “I love you,” he said. “I want you to be mine, sweet Catherine.”

  “I cannot,” I said, wrenching my head away. “If my grandmother were to hear of this…”

  “If she hears,” he said softly, “she will blame you. I will have no harm come to you, sweet Catherine. You are mine and I will protect you.”

  Cold dread washed over me, for I knew he was right. The priest in my grandmother’s chapel said it all the time; women corrupted men. If my grandmother heard of this, she would blame me.

  “You would be cast out of this house,” he murmured, “or married off to some wicked, poor man who did not love you. I will keep our secret. You will not be harmed.”

  He said I had accepted his gifts, and this meant I was beholden to him. He said I had teased him with a glance or a smile, and this meant I wanted him too. “You do not understand,” he said. “But this is love, Catherine. The body of a woman calls to a man, even if she knows it not, and he answers. You have been calling, and I will answer.”

  If this is love, I thought, why does it scare me so?

  I was twelve, not quite a woman and not quite a child. I was at a loss to know what to do.

  The other maids found it amusing. They did not ask what was happening, they thought they understood. They saw him pursuing, and me holding him off, and whispered I was another such as my cousin. It was always that way in our group. The girls all seemed to be in competition with one another. If one had a gallant, the others were jealous, cruel behind their backs.

  They did not know I was afraid of him, for I said nothing.

  Manox was in my head. When I went to say something, it was as though his hand came down on my mouth, holding my lips shut. He was the dryness in my throat, the murmur left unspoken. I was afraid he would tell my grandmother, and she would cast me out. I was afraid he would tell people I was a loose woman, and I would be ruined.

  And he knew I was in his power. His demands for me to meet him became more frequent, and when I did his hands were on me, touching my breasts, my throat, my face. I hated it. There was not water enough in the world to wash me clean when his sticky, sweaty hands roamed my skin.

  He asked to touch my intimate parts, and I refused. When he saw my horrified face, he became all kindness and care. “I would not do anything to make you uncomfortable,” he said. “I love you so.”

  Yet he was doing plenty to make me uncomfortable.

  And with each meeting, each kiss I allowed because I was afraid what he would do if I did not, his power grew. Had I been able to stop this when it had begun, I would have, but by that time, he was deep into me, a worm in my heart, part of the shadow at my back. Manox was an oppressive weight upon my shoulders. I was so young, but felt as old as Methuselah.

  Manox thought I was shying away to increase his love. “All women tease,” he said, smiling. “You tease to inflame my desire. And your wiles work, Catherine. Kiss me.”

  I kissed him, afraid what he would do if I did not.

  But I was not teasing, I did not want him.

  But that, he did not understand. He wanted me, so I must want him, that was what he thought. Lust granted him ownership. My feelings did not matter. In his mind, I was his.

  And as I battled Manox in my grandmother’s house, another kind of battle erupted in England. That autumn, men rose in rebellion against the King.

  It was slow to start, or perhaps we hear
d of it slowly. Men, afraid of the King’s break with Rome and horrified by monasteries closing, refused to stay silent anymore. People who had watched monasteries taken apart, brick by brick, stone by stone, treasures carted off in piles and holy men and women wailing at the gates, could watch no more. Hundreds of smaller houses were already gone, only a few had been spared. Convents had been hardest hit, since many only housed thirty nuns. Monks had been attacked; nuns and their convents had been all but obliterated.

  People had lost their jobs, their source of charity and education, then watched as nobles arrived to start building new houses on land once considered holy. Legions of former nuns and monks were on the roads and parishes had been commanded, by law, to provide for them, something most were unable to do.

  Some houses had not gone quietly. Tales of armed monks and even nuns who had barricaded their doors and prepared artillery to meet the King’s officers abounded. Villagers, too, had gone to aid their monasteries, armed with halberds and bills. Other houses had simply locked themselves in, and had found themselves dragged out. There was word sacred items had been buried all over England, to save the riches of God from the hands of the King.

  And as riches were taken from monasteries, and the people of England were ordered to support beggars, wealth unimaginable flowed into the hands of the King and Cromwell.

  The King was not only stealing from God. The King was attempting to kill God.

  “They are calling it the Pilgrimage of Grace,” Norfolk said to my grandmother. He had come quickly to inform her before he left to muster the King’s men. Norfolk was one of the men being sent to set the rebellion down.

  “Is it a great threat?” she asked.

  “Threat enough. I think they mean no harm to honest households, but keep your guard on watch, and sober. Mind your commoners. If word of this spreads, others may join them.”

  I glanced at my grandmother with round eyes, and she patted my hand. This was the first rebellion I had seen, but for her, a veteran of the Civil War as well as other uprisings, this was not a new occurrence.

  Within days we had news. Men were on the march in the north. It was whispered they might come for London.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chesworth House

  Autumn 1536

  “More paupers,” said my grandmother, her tone brittle. She had been told there was a party at the gates, begging for food, or work. They were monks, or once had been, and should be men of peace. But with the threat of rebellion on the wind any gathering of people at our doors was frightening.

  We had been told monks would be granted pensions when they left their monasteries, but generous grants only went to abbots and officers of the household. Most monks had five pounds a year and nuns two. Some abbots had two hundred pounds per year, but abbesses received a much smaller amount. The rest of the clergy, those not in jail for denying the King’s supremacy, had been offered a pittance, and were sent back to their families.

  But many had no families, and others had ones who did not want and could not care for them. The reason these men and women had been sent into holy orders in the first place was because their families had either died or could not support them. Men and woman were turning up in the streets, in towns, at our gates. Many monks were old, unable to do laborious work, which was all they were offered. Some were young, yet knew nothing but the trade of penmanship, and found honest work hard to come by since respectable merchants and booksellers did not want to associate with those on whom the King gazed with suspicion. The few with good pensions could set themselves up with a trade, if they knew one. Others had nothing. Former nuns were particularly vulnerable. There were few jobs women could do. Becoming a nun or a prostitute were virtually the only professions a woman could enter independently. Not all had family, and there was no place for them in this new, reformed Church. A few nuns, we had heard, had become tutors to the daughters of wealthy families, many more were marrying.

  And it was not only former monks and nuns who needed charity. The clergy had given aid to paupers before becoming paupers themselves. Now monasteries were closing, beggars had nowhere to go.

  “Send food from the kitchens,” she told her steward, “but tell them there is no work. They must go on. We took in enough the last time.”

  At first my grandmother had been generous, allowing former monks to take positions in the fields, offering a roof under which they might sleep. But she could not take them all in, and if she did it might be said Chesworth was a meeting place for those who would disobey their King.

  “And keep an eye on them,” she said. “Holy men they were once, but now they are desperate many have become thieves.”

  They had. There had been two hangings recently in the local town, men caught thieving. Both were former monks.

  “I’ll wager none have licences, either,” Agnes muttered, absentmindedly looking at me as her man departed, “which means they should be sent away with a flogging, or I should hand them over to be mutilated.”

  “You will not, though, will you, my lady?” I almost whispered. I felt so sorry for these men. The lives they had known were gone. They were adrift, like me.

  “I will not,” she said. “God teaches mercy for the lost and destitute. But say nothing to anyone, girl. If the King were to learn monks are turning up in hordes here, he would become more suspicious of the Howards.”

  I inclined my head. My uncle, even though he had profited from it, was not in favour of the dissolution of the monasteries, and everyone knew it. It was just another secret. I had plenty to keep now.

  *

  “I will never be naught to you, and able to marry me you be not,” I whispered to Manox as he pushed me into the wall. I had thought I had avoided him this time, scurrying down a little-used corridor, but he had found me. He always did. I knew not how, but I suspected he watched me, followed me.

  My actions were foolish. In time, I came to see this. I thought that by seeking out hidden paths and less-used ways I could avoid him, but it allowed him to corner me in places where he could touch me freely. Had I stayed with a group of girls he would have had more trouble. But I was young and so very foolish.

  He had been begging for a sign of my favour. Not a kiss this time. He wanted a present, something physical he could touch and hold. I knew this for what it was. He wanted proof I was his. A ribbon he could produce and tell everyone I had granted it to him. To exchange goods was seen as a prelude to agreeing to wed.

  I thought this was what he wanted. This chaos he had unleashed upon me was done to get a Howard into his bed, so he could press my grandmother to wed me to him. I would be a fine prize for a lowly musician. I was starting to see Manox for what he was, a hill-digger in search of buried treasure. I was the gold he sought.

  “You play with me again,” he murmured, taking a strand of my hair and pressing it to his sweaty lips. “You are charming beyond measure. I shall be wild for you in time, sweet Catherine.”

  “I do not want you wild for me.”

  “Then surrender. Grant me what I want and I shall worship you forever more.”

  “I am a maid.”

  “You are a woman, and a delectable one at that. Tease me no more, Catherine. Your heart is kind behind all this mischief. Take me to your bed, and I will show you how sweet love is.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Then let me touch you.”

  “You are touching me.”

  He chuckled. “Let me touch you… where others do not.”

  My cheeks burned with shame and fear. Each kiss, each touch I permitted led only to more, but I knew not how to stop him. Each time I resisted he threatened me, but managed to make it sound as though he was protecting me. All this, his desire, his lust, his love, it was all my fault, he said. If I said anything, I would be cast out. I had friends here, a future. If I spoke, I would lose it all.

  “I will let you,” I said. “But after that, you must ask for no more from me.”

  He smiled. “I will find
somewhere for us to meet.”

  “I must go,” I said, desperately thinking of a lie that would release me. “My grandmother called for me.”

  “Then go, but know you take my heart with you.”

  I ran from him, steps faltering as I raced. I reached a platform between two sets of stairs and stood, heart pounding and breath sharp, cutting my throat. I was terrified. Fear was sour in my belly.

  This was not like that which the other girls had, not soft words and sweet caresses. This was something else.

  *

  “Rebellion has begun,” my grandmother said to Katherine as I played for them. “Men have risen in the north. They carry banners of the Five Wounds of Christ.”

  “The first rising in Lincolnshire was quashed,” said my aunt. “The King will crush this one, too.”