Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  “You must be more careful,” he said, cradling me. “Some men, they are beasts. You must make sure you are always safe, with another woman or a friend. Do not go out alone.”

  “I was gathering onions,” I said, as though that was the only important fact in the world.

  “You are so innocent, at times,” he said, pulling back. “And such a vixen at others. Sometimes I think I am in love with two women.”

  I thought that at times myself.

  “Thank you for helping me,” I whispered.

  “What kind of chivalric knight would I be to leave you unprotected?” he asked. “Women cannot look after themselves, and other men have no right to touch you for you are mine.”

  A traitorous thought, that they should not have touched me because I did not want them to, flashed through my head. But I dashed it away. Men saved women. Francis had rescued me. I should be nothing but grateful.

  When he left, I thought on what he had said, and blamed myself. I had been careless. I should not be out alone. This was no world for women, it was made for men. It was not my world, but theirs. I had to be more careful, just as he had said.

  In the kitchens, Dorothy put a hand on my shoulder, seeing I was pale. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Some men accosted me, wanting a kiss.”

  She nodded. “That happened to me after Ned,” she said. “Men became more forward, taking liberties. Much of it was only a tease, but some of it scared me, and I was vulnerable. That is why I said yes to Thomas.” Dorothy was to be wed soon. “He was kind and with him I became safe.”

  “Francis rescued me,” I said.

  She smiled. “He loves you so. He speaks of nothing but you.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “How beautiful you are, how sweet.”

  That night, feeling I should reward him, I let Francis into my bed. We were together as man and wife. I cannot say it brought me great pleasure, but he was careful and kind. It is payment, I thought as he rocked inside me, gasping in my ear. He saved me. I owed him this.

  What a fool I was. But I was young, and that can be my sole excuse. I did not think, not once, that all people should wish to aid someone in need and not look for reward. I should have understood that someone stepping in to help you does not make you beholden to them. People should do acts of kindness because they are human, not so it will bring them something in return. But I felt in his debt. Granting him access to my body was my way of paying him back.

  But there was someone else with payback on their mind as summer became old.

  Manox.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chesworth House

  Late Summer 1538

  “Hark at Dereham, the broken winded!” Ned shouted from beyond our curtains.

  I heard laughter and a huff from Alice, my usual bedfellow. She was most put out that once again Francis and I were in our bed. Jealous, more than anything, I thought with a certain smugness as I caressed Francis’ heated face. Kat and Anthony Restwold had ceased to be a couple, and he and Alice were one now. She had gone to bed with him on promise of marriage, and dutifully he had gone to my grandmother the next day, gaining her approval. Alice seemed pleased with him and he with her. They had wanted the bed, but Francis was not a man to say no to. I had come to understand that.

  Our coupling had become frequent. Every day I drank tea of rue now. When Francis came to our rooms, we often did not sit with the others anymore, but went straight to bed. He had showed me much, how a woman might please a man, and, grateful for all he had done for me, I performed all he wanted. And I had done more. I had stopped talking to other men, even friends. I had stopped even looking at them, for he liked that not either.

  His rages frightened me, and often I obeyed him out of fear. When he calmed down, he told me it was my fault. He loved me so much he was made wild by me. This is what love is, I told myself; being wanted and needed by another so much that they cannot let you even talk to another man. His anger was proof of love. His jealousy proof of affection.

  And it was not always bad. Had it been, I might have tried to cast him off. He was kind and generous, brought me presents and told me I was beautiful.

  But when he was enraged, he was spiteful, cruel.

  “You are a whore!” he spat at me one day when I had smiled at one of Norfolk’s men. “No one would want you for a wife. You are damaged, rotten. You will get no better than me, and this is how you treat me? Casting doe-eyes at other men?”

  He always apologised, said he did not mean it, but the more he said such things the more they stuck in my head. I was damaged goods. Francis was the best I could do. These things and others, I told myself at night, for sleep was a stranger to me.

  “Should we join the others?” I asked softly, my tone apologetic. It was the tone I always used now; I apologised before he even became angry.

  “I want you to myself,” he said, resting his head upon my naked breasts. Under me, there was dampness. Francis and I were using an old method to ensure I did not get with child. Before he spilled seed, he would withdraw. It was safe, he said, but I secretly continued to drink the tea, and Joan had given me a sponge to soak in vinegar and insert inside myself, for Joan said withdrawing was not as safe as men claimed.

  We had agreed to be careful. Francis needed time to rise in favour before he could ask for my hand. He was saving money from his wages, and also sold food left over from the Dowager’s feasts to men who tended hunting hounds, or to the richer of the poor in the village. It was for our future, he said. But he did not want the wrath of Norfolk to fall upon him, or me, he said, if an unwanted child was born to us. So we were careful, but he always wanted to lie with me now.

  And it was not like the first time I could barely remember and tried not to. Nor was it like the second, when I had granted my body in payment. There were times I felt something stirring in me, deep and pleasurable, and would pull him against me, pushing him deeper inside. It made him quite wild with ecstasy to feel me respond and I felt wildness in me react, surging up, breaking out. Sometimes, I could lose myself. Not to blankness and the empty place, but to pleasure. Once, just once, I had become entirely lost, drifting upon a sea of happy blackness and sensation. Joy had washed over me until I felt I could not breathe. Being there was wonderful. Not like being lost in wine or emptiness. It was a happier release.

  I wanted more. I wanted to drown in it.

  But there were practicalities to handle. Quite aside from not getting with child, my bed sheets needed washing often. I had made a deal with one of the laundresses called Bess. Joan had introduced us, for she used her to conceal her time with Ned. In return for a few treats, easily gained from Francis or the kitchens, she washed my sheets as well as Joan’s and kept quiet.

  Some were shocked by my new wantonness. Mary Lascelles had tried to warn me off, and when that failed, had ceased to speak to me. She had gone about saying it was clear I was a bawd, for my behaviour now proved I had led Manox on before. She did not once think what was happening now was a result of what had gone on then.

  “Ignore her,” said Joan. “She is jealous. No man would want that joyless, prim little lemon! She could make a man shrivel in an instant, so acidic is she!”

  I laughed. There were times, when I shared the secrets of my bed with Joan or Kat, that I felt grand and grown up. At others, I felt ashamed. The wild Catherine and the child I had been were in conflict.

  I told myself everyone was doing it, and there was some truth in that. Everyone knew it went on. As long as no one spoke of it, there was no harm.

  And yet, that was just what someone was about to do.

  *

  “Catherine, I must speak with you.”

  Francis’ whisper was urgent. “What is it?” I asked, closing the door to my grandmother’s chamber, where I had been serving.

  “That music teacher, Manox,” he said. “The one you said tried to force himself on you?”

  I flushed at the mere sound o
f his name. I tried most days to forget Manox, and it had been easy enough. I could push much to the edges of my mind. Manox was married now, and although he was still working nearby, did not come to the house as much as he had when hunting me. But I had told Francis. I had had no choice. He had heard about it and rushed to me in a rage, jealous a man had kissed me before he had even known me. Upon hearing the tale, he had grown angry at Manox instead, which was a relief, but still I sometimes caught him looking at me in a strange way, and wondered if I would be punished for this envy of not being the first to lay hands on me.

  “What of him?”

  Francis looked angry and I took a step back. “Master Ashby came to me,” he said, speaking of one of his friends. “He said Manox knows of us, and tried to get him to stop us meeting.”

  “What business is it of his?”

  “I beat Manox at dice, some nights ago,” said Francis. “And I think the man is still jealous over you.”

  “Does he mean to go to my grandmother?”

  “He wanted Ashby to. My friend refused, but there is word Manox wrote a note, and has put it somewhere the Dowager is bound to find it.”

  “In her chambers? I can search them. She will not suspect.”

  “He would know that.” Francis looked thoughtful. “But look anyway. Anywhere where she might look and you would not.” He kissed my hand swiftly. “Fear not,” he said. “We will find it.”

  We did not. Clever, sneaky Manox had hidden it in my grandmother’s pew in the chapel. She found it that afternoon. A page came to the maidens’ chamber. We were all called to her rooms.

  Standing before her, I trembled, but was also bemused. I was not alone. All the women had been brought before her. Did she mean to disgrace me before everyone?

  But she did not. My grandmother burst into a vicious tirade, saying she knew of our ‘misrule’, but her wrath was directed at all of us. It was clear the note had implicated someone, but perhaps not named names.

  When she was done scolding us, I went to Francis. “We must get the note,” I said. “We must know for sure if there were names in it. You could be in danger.”

  He nodded. “You distract her, and I will steal it. Where would she keep it?”

  “In the gilt box, beside her bed.” I did not have to think. That was where she hid anything important. “But I will get it. If you were caught in her room they would know you were embroiled. I can get in without anyone asking questions.”

  I crept into my grandmother’s room that afternoon. I found the note.

  “Your Grace,

  It shall be meet you take good heed to your gentlewomen for if it shall like you half an hour after you shall be a bed to rise suddenly and visit their chamber, you shall see that which shall displease you. But if you make any body of counsel you shall be deceived. Make them fewer your secretary.”

  I met Francis in the corridor and showed him the note. “Manox meant for her to catch you in my chambers,” I muttered as he copied it.

  “At least he named no one,” Francis whispered, blowing on the ink. “With this, I can accost him. He will not get away with this.”

  I put the letter back, and Francis marched off to get Ned. That afternoon, they cornered Manox. How I wish I had been there to see it!

  “He quailed, like the little dog he is,” Francis told me later. “I shouted that he had no love for you, or for me, and had pretended to be our friend whilst working behind our backs. He denied everything, said it was not he who wrote the note, but I could see in his face it was.”

  “You will not be able to come to our chambers for a while,” I said. “My grandmother is suspicious now; she will watch us all closely.”

  “I will wait,” he said. “Anything to protect you.”

  Something washed over me, half joy to be so loved and half fear. Possession was in his eyes.

  As I went to my bed that night, I wondered if I had ever been master of my own self. It was a thing impossible, for my father owned me until I was handed to a husband. My grandmother had mastery over me, as did Francis. I tried to push these thoughts aside, but they would not leave. Somewhere inside me a rebellion was awakening. Traitorous thoughts. I would like not to be a prisoner, but to be free.

  Within days, it was not only Francis defending me. We had all long suspected my uncle William knew what went on in our chambers, but much like my grandmother, did not mind as long as it remained unspoken. Enraged, he embarked on a plan of attack against Manox and his wife, quailing them into silence.

  “It was hardly your fault,” Joan said when I apologised about the men not being able to visit. “Manox was jealous, and in envy men do much that is troublesome.” She sighed. “But be careful. The Dowager is on the lookout now.”

  Francis and Ned, as well as all the others promised to take care, and it was as well we had found the note. For a few nights in a row my grandmother stormed into our rooms and had her servants search under beds and look behind the curtain to the gallery. We understood it was a feint, otherwise why call us to her beforehand to shout at us, making it clear she knew? That meeting had been a warning, all searches after a formality. This was made only more clear to me a few days later, when my aunt Katherine came upon me in a corridor and took my chin in her hands. “You should not stay up late banqueting,” she said with a smile. “It will harm your beauty.” And with that, she walked on.

  Everyone knew. They had always known. The important thing was to not be caught.

  We told the men to stay away, and they did. But in time, frustrated by lack of access to me, Francis became more daring, and more reckless.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chesworth House

  Autumn 1538

  Once more, I am beholden to Francis, I thought miserably. I was staring from the window of the maidens’ chamber as mist, inescapable as regret, crept thick across the orchards. I always felt in debt to him. And not just for him defending me against those men, or silencing Manox. I was actually in debt to him now.

  He had told me of a silkwoman who made pretty flowers, and I said I wished I could have a French fennel, a flower of which I was fond. “I will buy it for you,” he said. “Then you can wear it so all will know you are mine.”

  “I can pay,” I said quickly. It was a lie. I had little money of my own, certainly not enough for a silk flower, but his words made me uncomfortable.

  “I will get it for you,” he said.

  “I will pay you back,” I said, determined at that moment I would find the money somehow.

  When he brought it to me, I was afraid to wear it. One of my grandmother’s friends, Lady Brereton, saw me looking at it sadly one day and guessed the reason. “I will say I gave it to you,” she said.

  I had stared at her in shock, but she smiled. “I, too, was young once,” she said.

  I wore it, but felt strange when I did. It felt like a brand.

  My grandmother knew there was something betwixt Francis and me, and had asked her servant Will Ashby if anything was going on. He, friend to Francis, said there was not and she was reassured, but Joan told me once that someone asked where Francis was, and absentmindedly my grandmother had said he would be with me. She, like everyone else, knew.

  But she was distracted. That September, the King attacked a shrine close to her heart. The tomb of Saint Thomas Becket in Canterbury had been raided. Gold, silver and jewels that had been brought as offerings from thousands of people over the space of three hundred years had been taken away by twenty oxen carts to the King’s Jewel House. The Saint’s bones had been defiled, scattered about like refuse. Some had been burned on a pyre, some thrown on a dung heap.

  Elsewhere, images and statues of this Saint who once defied a king had been destroyed, including ones in London, and one in our personal chapel at Lambeth.

  The destruction of Becket’s shrine was seen as sacrilege by many, the Pope perhaps most of all. There was word the King would be excommunicated immediately, his subjects would be told by Rome to no m
ore obey him. My grandmother was afraid not only of what the King was doing, but of rebellion to come.

  I sighed again, shifting my thoughts from rebellion in England to the captivity I was plunging myself into. It was not only the flower I was in debt for. Fool that I was, I accepted money from Francis. I told him I would pay him back and with his coin purchased cloth to adorn one of my hoods, and a cap of velvet with a white feather. I was fourteen, and loved beautiful things. When he was good to me I thought nothing of this, but sometimes I saw a pit opening under me. I was digging myself deeper every day.

  And gifts of money, or loans as I insisted they were, made Francis increasingly demanding.

  Alice said one day that Francis would have me as his wife, and before many people he roared, “By Saint John, you may guess twice and guess worse!” That was as good as an oath. Everyone took it to mean we were engaged.