I did not blame Jane. I thought of the vagrants on the road to Steeple Tew, of Ellen’s mother who had cursed me, and I knew I was doing the same as Jane. I had nowhere else to go either.
‘Best keep out of his way,’ Jane advised. ‘You just have to look the wrong way and he comes at you. I saw him beat a servant most to death once because he’d dropped a cup. He’d take fists to you as soon as look at you. That’s what he likes,’ she added. ‘Don’t give him no reason to notice you and you’ll get by. It’s better than sleeping under a hedgerow.’
So I worried, but what could I do?
At Steeple Tew, the whole household ate together in the hall. It was different at Haverley Court, where Cat dined alone every night with Lord Delahay and his secretary in the chamber specially built for that purpose. I could not imagine what it must be like with just the three of them. When the last course had been cleared away, the only servant allowed to enter the chamber was Lord Delahay’s manservant, Daniel, a silent man with strange goat-like eyes and a smile that made me want to wash my hands. He carried wine up to the chamber and waited there until he was sent for more, which happened often. I counted out the jugs anxiously every night, and shook my head when Daniel returned them for refilling.
No longer did I put my mistress to bed. In the mornings I would find skirts on the floor, the lace ripped and trampled, and pins scattered everywhere, while Cat slept, breathing coarsely through her open mouth. When she awoke, she would complain of a headache and send me for a plaster, or an ointment of rue to dab on her temples.
Haverley Court was so spacious that I had the luxury of a small bed to myself and a chest to keep my few possessions. I slept above the kitchens, in a small chamber right at the back of the house, but sometimes at night I thought I could hear the sound of shouting and screaming and drunken laughter echoing off the new walls and bouncing up and down the chimneys, and I would rub at the scar on my hand. I kept Peg in my chest, and whenever I lifted the lid for a clean petticoat or a cap, I would catch a glimpse of her face and it seemed to me that she looked as worried as I felt.
Once, fearing that her courses might be coming, Cat had asked for her rhubarb remedy. In truth, I forgot about it until the evening, when I hurried after Daniel as he carried wine to the chamber. He looked shocked and tried to protest as I caught him up, but I was already opening the door. I had thought to help him, that was all.
The chamber was dark, lit only by the leaping flames in the fireplace and a couple of candles. Cat reclined on a cushion while Anthony, her husband’s secretary, was tickling her with a long feather. They were both dishevelled and shrieking with laughter. Cat’s cap had come off and her hair tumbled shockingly around her shoulders. Her face was slack and shiny in the firelight.
I did not see Lord Delahay at first. ‘My lady,’ I began, aghast at the sight of Cat. She looked up and defiance chased shame across her face before a figure surged out of the shadows and snarled at me.
‘What are you doing here, wench?’
I showed him the remedy. ‘For my mistress. I thought—’
I did not get to finish. I was still speaking as he drew back his arm and caught me such a buffet across my face that I was sent sprawling to the floor at Daniel’s feet, the rhubarb decoction splashing around me as the goblet shattered and pain exploded in my cheekbone.
‘You’re here to serve, not think,’ he said viciously. ‘Now get out and do not dare come in here again.’
For a long moment, I lay there, so dazzled by pain that I could not move.
‘Get out,’ said Lord Delahay again, softly this time, but with such menace that I flinched. Somehow I dragged myself to my knees. I tried to look at Cat to see if she wanted help, but her eyes would not meet mine.
Daniel edged some shards of the goblet towards me with his toe, and wincing, I gathered them together as I struggled awkwardly to my feet. My skirts were soaked, I had bruised my shoulder when I fell and my head was still ringing from the savage blow.
I had no choice but to leave, but I felt ashamed that I had left my mistress in such a parlous state.
Cat did not want to meet my eyes the next morning. She must have seen the bruise on my cheek but she said nothing. I dressed her hair in a silence that grew heavier with every moment that passed. When I had finished, my gaze met hers in the looking glass, and I thought I saw shame and fear in the blue eyes. I remembered how I had felt when Avery forced me, time after time, and how I had longed for her to notice, to say ‘This is wrong’ and put a stop to it. I rested my hands on her shoulders.
‘Cat,’ I said, ‘what is he doing to you?’
Something flickered in her expression, but then she shrugged my hands aside. ‘I do not know what you mean.’
‘Lord Delahay . . . your husband . . . does he hit you the way he hit me?’ I touched the bruise on my cheek where my skin felt tender and my eye throbbed cruelly.
‘Of course not.’ The blue eyes slipped and slid away from mine. ‘He just does not like to be disturbed. You should not have come in.’
‘You were drunk,’ I said bluntly. ‘You were . . .’ I searched for a word to tell her how shocked I had been. ‘. . . acting lewdly with your husband’s secretary.’
‘Acting lewdly?’ Cat mocked me. ‘We were enjoying ourselves, something that you clearly do not know how to do, Mary. You always were po-faced,’ she said with a toss of her head. ‘Oh, you would not understand! I am a married woman now. I do not have to behave like a virgin. My husband wishes me to be friendly to Anthony. He wishes us to make merry together in the evenings, and that is what we do. Would you have me refuse my own husband? Now, bring me my ruff.’
Purse-mouthed, I obeyed, but everything I did was wrong that morning. Cat would not be pleased. The ruff was soiled, the lace was torn, the wires were bent. I pricked her with the pins, she said. I tied her garters too tight. She bade me take away the shoes I brought her, even though she had asked for them only a moment before.
I set my teeth and did everything she asked. I was fastening pearls around her neck, my expression still stiff with resentment, when I saw her wince in the looking glass. She put a hand to her belly, and my anger faded with understanding. ‘Is it your courses, my lady? I will make you a remedy to calm the cramps,’ I said.
‘It is not that!’ There was a petulant edge to Cat’s voice as the blue eyes filled with tears.
‘Then what?’
‘I am not with child!’
In my head, I calculated how long we had been at Haverley Court. She had been married when the hawthorn in the hedgerows was heavy with blossom, and now the days were short and dark. It would be Christmastide before long, although I could not imagine much celebration at Haverley Court.
‘You have not been married long,’ I tried to console her.
‘Long enough!’ Cat snapped, and then in one of her abrupt changes of mood, she swung around on her stool and grabbed my hand. ‘Oh, Mary, I am such a shrewish mistress today, but you do not know . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘I am frightened,’ she whispered after a moment.
‘George wishes for a son,’ she tried again. ‘I am afraid that if I do not conceive soon, he will be angry with me as he was with you last night. George has had two wives, Anthony told me, and both have failed him. He said the last wife was so despairing that she drowned herself.’ She looked imploringly up at me. ‘George . . . his temper is dark but if I could just have a child, it would all be better, I am sure of it.’
‘Does he blame you then?’
‘He is afraid that he has married another barren wife. Mary, I know old Bridget taught you at Steeple Tew and you are well versed in remedies. Can you not give me something to help me conceive? And do not tell me I must pray,’ she snapped as I opened my mouth. ‘I have tried prayer and still my courses come!’
I looked at her helplessly. I only knew how to rid myself of a child, not to conceive one. ‘We should ask the midwife in the village.’
‘She will not come. I sent for
her and she had the impertinence to refuse because we are an ungodly household!’
‘Perhaps if you drank less . . .’ I began, but Cat turned her face away.
‘I cannot. Do not ask me to explain. But please, Mary, you must help me.’
‘I will ask Sindony,’ I said.
Sindony sent me to a wise woman who lived in a tumbledown cottage on the outskirts of the village. The villagers muttered that she was a witch, which I dismissed, but I could not help thinking of it as I knocked on the lintel and ducked my head to step into the hovel. She was old and dirty, and the foetid smell inside made my eyes water. She looked me up and down assessingly, and I found myself shifting from foot to foot in spite of myself as I tried to explain what Cat needed.
She told me to give Cat ten juniper berries to eat every morning. When that did not work, I bruised mandrake seeds and steeped them in a cup of white wine for Cat to drink, which she did, doggedly. When her courses kept on coming, she sent me back to the wise woman, and I learnt how to make cooling drinks with barley water and blanched almonds and cucumbers and white poppy seeds.
And then came the morning when Cat vomited over the side of her bed into the chamber pot. She lay back against her pillows, groaning, and would not get up. ‘I am ill,’ she said tearfully.
I stroked her hair back from her forehead. ‘Perhaps you are not ill,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you are with child.’
Cat drew in a long breath. I could tell that it had not even occurred to her. ‘Could it really be so?’
‘Well, we will see,’ I said. ‘But you must eat only wholesome foods and drink little and be moderate in all things if you wish your son to be born healthy.’
To my surprise, Cat did everything I told her. She was determined to have a son. I do not know what she told Lord Delahay, but there were no more disorderly evenings. Instead, Lord Delahay left with his secretary and his manservant, I knew not and cared not where.
The Court was a much pleasanter place without Lord Delahay. The servants lost that rigid tension that comes from being braced for a blow, and the very atmosphere seemed lighter. Cat lay on cushions and let me spoil her with dainty morsels and cakes. I watched as her stomach swelled, and I remembered how mine had never had the chance to do the same. It was almost as if the babe growing within her had taken the place of my child that had been evacuated into a privy before it could even exist, and I fussed over Cat and fretted about her health as if the babe was part of me as much as of her. For a while, it was almost like the old days at Steeple Tew. I read to her and I sewed for the baby and we looked forward to the baby’s arrival together. As the months passed, we grew close again and I was happier than I had been since before Avery returned from service.
I hoped that Lord Delahay would stay away long enough to persuade the village midwife to attend the birth, but the woman was obdurate, and in the end I had to rely on Sindony and the wise woman for their help. As an unmarried woman, I should not have been in the birthing chamber, but Cat clung to my hand and grew so distressed at the idea of my leaving that Sindony told me to stay.
So I was there when Cecily was born. I watched her come into the world head first. The wise woman pulled her out of Cat’s body, tipped her up by her heels and smacked her bottom until she uttered a thin wail of protest, and then she put her straight into my hands, bloody and beautiful, and my heart swelled with emotion so intense that I could barely breathe. There were tears running down my face as I gently wiped the blood from her and swaddled her, and I could hardly bear to carry her over to Cat who lay slumped against her pillows, grey with exhaustion. She lifted herself onto her elbows, though, at my approach.
‘Is he healthy?’
‘She is! You have a beautiful daughter,’ I told her, smiling through my tears, and was dismayed to see the eagerness swiped from her face.
‘A daughter?’ she echoed dully as she fell back against the pillows. ‘You told me I would have a son!’
‘Next time, perhaps, but for now your daughter is as healthy as you could wish.’
‘What good is a daughter to me?’
‘But Cat—!’
‘I don’t want her,’ she said, and she turned her face away. ‘You can have her.’
I looked down at the baby in my arms. She was tiny and red and wrinkled still and she was making little bleating noises, but to me she was exquisite. I could not understand how Cat could not want her.
‘I will be your mother, little one,’ I swore to Cecily in a fierce whisper. ‘You are my daughter now.’
Chapter Twelve
Cat
When I think of Haverley Court – and I do that as little as possible, as I am sure you do too – I think of peacocks. Do you remember that raucous screech that was the backdrop to any conversation? Such an ugly cry for such a beautiful bird. I used to watch them from the window, dragging their long tails across the gravel paths that were gradually being laid in the garden. I’d wait for the moment when they would pause and haul their feathers upwards in a flamboyant fan. There was a time when I loved that startling blue, those strange, shimmering patterns like otherworldly eyes watching me.
But that was before I knew what it was to be watched. Now I cannot think of peacocks without a shudder of disgust.
My wedding night was just the start of my shame. I hoped, I think, that once we were settled at Haverley Court, George would become more . . . normal. I thought we could spend more time together and get to know each other, and that we would become, in the end, like any other husband and wife.
I was such an innocent in those days.
The first night at Haverley Court, George invited Anthony to dine with us. The three of us sat around the table, and I thanked God for Anthony who could coax George out of ill humour far better than I could. He was charm itself, cutting the choicest morsels from each dish to offer me, while George drank and watched us. I was afraid that he might be displeased by the attention Anthony showed me, but instead his expression was brighter than I had seen it before, and his eyes were lit with an intensity that made me shift uneasily on my stool as they flickered from Anthony to me and then back again.
Ah, Anthony was so fair in those days! I have never seen a man more comely. Merry brown eyes, white teeth, a smile that creased his cheeks just so. Good legs, broad shoulders, a kind of careless grace in everything he did. Anthony could make passing the pepper box seem like a flourishing bow.
You never trusted him, did you? But, Mary, you did not understand. Anthony could make me laugh. He made me feel beautiful. He made me feel desired. He made me feel as if what we did together was normal. Is it any wonder that I wished that he had been my husband instead of George with his simmering temper and strange desires?
He was a younger son of a good family that had fallen on hard times. Like yours, I suppose. I had not thought of that before. But Anthony admitted cheerfully that he was penniless and dependent on his post as George’s secretary. I was never really sure what he did. He wrote letters, I think, and carried out business for George, standing in for my husband in tedious matters, like talking to his wife, amusing his wife . . . oh yes, and fucking his wife.
I did not realise at first. For the first few weeks I was just happy that Anthony was there as a buffer between me and the chilling intensity in my husband’s eyes. It felt strange eating alone with just the three of us. When the meal was over, George would call for more wine, and more and more. He would drink steadily until his eyes were glassy, but his voice did not slur or his expression slacken the way mine did. I was not used to such strong wine, and my head soon swam, but when I tried to protest that I had had enough, he would fill up my glass anyway.
‘Drink it,’ he said.
It was not that he raised his voice. His expression did not change. But something in me quailed anyway, and I found myself lifting my glass to my lips with a hand that was not quite steady. And the more I drank, the easier it became to forget that I was his wife. You tucked in the corners of your mouth when I comp
lained of a headache every morning. You demurred when I asked you to bring me wine to make me feel better. You told me that I should not drink so much. You thought I should be ashamed of myself.
You did not understand, Mary. I was ashamed, and that was why I drank. I could not bear it otherwise.
Wine, and Anthony. I craved them both. And George was happy for me to have them both. He encouraged Anthony to flirt with me, and when I saw that my husband did not mind, I flirted back. Why not?
One evening, Anthony was tickling me with a peacock feather, running it along the bare skin just above my bodice until I shivered with pleasure and giggled at his daring. We were both drunk, and laughing, and George was watching us, his face blazing.
‘Your hair is the colour of summer corn.’ Anthony stroked the feather under my chin and teased beneath my ear. ‘Why do you not take it down? Let me see it.’
I glanced at George. ‘Take it down,’ he said in a strange hoarse voice.
So I lifted my hands to unpin the hair you had dressed so carefully, and I let it tumble about my face and down over my shoulders. I knew quite well how shocked you would have been if you had seen me, and I was embarrassed, I was, but Mary, I was aroused too. My blood was trembling beneath my skin and my breath had shortened, and after all, I was just obeying my husband. Even you could not have said that I was wrong to do that.
‘Beautiful.’ Anthony wound a lock of my hair around his hand and tugged me gently towards him. ‘You are the fairest of the fair, my lady.’ With his other hand, he flicked the feather over my bodice, teasing at my laces. ‘Is the rest of you as fair, I wonder?’
Drunk as I was, my smile slipped at his boldness, and there was a moment when I was able to see myself as you might see me, sprawled on the cushions. ‘I . . . am tired,’ I said carefully, trying not to slur my words. I put down my glass. ‘I will retire.’
George’s expression did not change. ‘Fill my wife’s glass,’ he said to Anthony without looking at him, and Anthony rose gracefully to fetch the jug of wine. Bending over me, close enough for me to feel his breath on my cheek, he poured wine into my glass.
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