The Winchester Goose: At the Court of Henry VIII

by Arnopp, Judith

  The youngling leans on the wall beside me, his narrow eyes seeking a way beneath my clothes. Experience tells me that he will want to be the first ... I pray he will be the last too. “What’s your name?” he slurs, taking the wine from me and tipping it to his own mouth. A trail of liquid runs down his chin and I watch his Adam’s apple bob for a bit before he hands the drink back to me.

  For some reason, I shy away from using my own name and give the first that comes to mind. “Betsy,” I say and try not to flinch from him when he draws me closer. The smell of his carousing engulfs me; stale wine and body odour mingled with a hint of vomit.

  “Well, fair Betsy. Am I right in assuming you have been kissed before?”

  I never kiss the punters, they can do as they like with me as long as there is no kissing. Kissing is for Francis, not the likes of this fellow. I try to turn my mouth away but he seizes my face with strong fingers and clamps my lips into a mockery of a kiss before forcing his mouth over mine. He swamps me, his furred tongue plunging down my throat as his cold hands pull apart my bodice and dive inward, searching and pinching.

  He is strong and urgent and I whimper like a virgin in the face of this assault over which I have no control. Panic prickles at the edge of reason. I have made a bad mistake in coming here.

  I must get away. But at the first feeble attempt I make to wriggle free, a fist hammers against my jaw. Bright lights flash in my head and I slump to the ground, the laughter of his companions loud in my ears as he throws himself down upon me. I can barely remember my own name.

  It seems he pounds away at me for a lifetime and when he is done, I curl into a ball while he towers over me, fumbling to re-tie his piece as he reels away. “Who’s next?” he calls to his companions and straight away, another steps forward to take his place. I scramble into a sitting position. “No, no, I never agreed to…”

  But I am dragged upward, thrust against the wall and when I open up my mouth and begin to holler, rough hands are clamped across my mouth, restricting my breath and stifling my cries. He rips up my skirts and I know I am lost.

  In all my days of whoring I have never felt so dirty, never been so ill-used. I am filled with hate for them and for myself. These young sons of lords and princes do not waste their noble courtesies on the likes of me. I am nothing to them. As they use me, one by one, tears slip from my eyes and the strength seeps from my body. My limbs are limp. I give myself up to their violence.

  When it is finally over, I do not move. From my place in the gutter I see their feet milling around and know they are drawing lots as to who shall have me next. Boots come close to my head and loud voices clamour in my ears as they begin to scuffle. One of them treads on my hand and I draw it back, put my fingers in my mouth to deaden the pain as they thunder around me. Then, one of them drops his knife in the straw by my head.

  Before I even think what I am doing, I grab the blade and scramble to my feet. Weaving amongst them, I dart from the yard and into the main thoroughfare. There, lifting my skirts to my knees, I dash back along the street, my dugs bouncing free as a cry goes up behind me.

  I head straight for home.

  There are just a few folk in the streets about my lodgings and they turn to watch as I fly by. “Are you all right, Joanie?” someone calls but I cannot risk stopping. They cannot help me now.

  I hurtle round the corner and into the alleyway, where I almost collide with Sybil who is stalking a bedraggled hen, escaped from some back yard.

  “Joanie?” Her face blanches as she becomes aware of the danger.

  “Stay there, Sybil,” I call over my shoulder. The breath is rasping from my throat. “Send them off, tell 'em I went some other way.” I sprint onward, grab the railing and take the rickety stairs two at a time. As I burst through the door the warm fug of home engulfs me.

  M’lady looks up startled from her bed as I fall to the floor on my hands and knees, my chest heaving. She begins to cry. “Hush.” I crawl toward the bed and drop onto the mattress beside her. “It’s all right, Sweetling, there, there…”

  She is still blubbing when the door is thrown open and my attackers surge into the room, filling the space. In a flash of fury, realising how stupid I have been to lead them here, I spring to my feet, trying to shield her from their gaze, hating myself for putting her in danger.

  Curiously, now that they have me cornered they seem uncertain, hesitant, and I am reminded of their youth. Their brightly coloured clothes stand out against the drabness of my home, but the candle light shows up their bloodshot eyes and ravaged faces. They are nothin’ but drunken scoundrels, surely I can outwit them yet. I will dally with them, hold them off and pray that Sybil has had the sense to send for the watch.

  While my eyes dart from one to the other, assessing the danger, deciding how to act, they mill about my room. M’lady clings to me, peering over my shoulder, her tiny body shivering against my back. One of them kicks over a stool and a jug smashes onto the floor. Her cries become more vocal, her panic increasing.

  I do not move when the most brazen of them, the one that had me first, approaches the bed and leers down at me. All I can think of is the revulsion of our recent coupling but I stick out my chin and let him see my scorn. I force a smile and lead his eyes down to my open bodice. I am not sure I can stand to be taken again but if it will protect M’lady from harm then I welcome it, and hope that the constables will hurry. I try to smile as prettily as I can.

  “Well, Betsy, we meet again and I see you have a sister … and … a delectable looking one too.” He puts his foot on the edge of the bed and reaches past me toward her, placing a finger beneath her lowered chin.

  “Get your hands off!” I snarl, prepared to defend her with my life. But before I need to take action against him, he draws back from her as if he has been stung. For a moment I am confounded by the horror on his face.

  “Eve!” he cries, stumbling back to join his companions. They form a ring about him, every one of them fixing startled eyes upon the pair of us. “By all that’s holy,” he spits, “the bawd has turned my sister into a harlot!”

  Isabella Greywater – February 1542

  By the time I regain my senses I am lost in a mob of people, far from home. I look about me, confused by the sudden hubbub. A woman with a basket bawls in my ear that she has some ‘lovely fresh 'errings’. I spin around, not knowing where I am or how I got here. Someone barges into me, almost knocking me from my feet, and I am pushed this way and that, turning confused, frightening circles, searching for my senses.

  “You all right, Lady?”

  I blink stupidly at the rough looking fellow who is addressing me, certain that I do not know him. But that is all I am certain of.

  “I am lost,” I whimper like a child, “so very, very lost …”

  I cannot even recall my own name. In my hands I am clutching a rosary and a bible, but have no idea how I came by them.

  I feel I have to find somebody without delay, but I cannot remember who. And then a memory stirs in the bottom of my mind, shifting like a brown trout in a murky stream, unfurling slowly, unreeling like a serpent. I know that when I find it the memory will be painful, but I cling to it anyway, grab it by the tail and pull it to the surface of my consciousness.

  “Eve,” I whisper at last. “I have lost my sister, Eve. Have you seen her?”

  My companion chuckles and rubs his beard. “That was careless. Sorry, Lady, I don’t know anyone called Eve ...” He stops mid-sentence. “Listen, you are lost and I can’t be leavin’ you to wander about in this mob. Let me take you home. Where do you live? I’m sure your people are searchin’ for you. It won’t do for both you and Eve to be lost, will it now?”

  Where do I live? My mind evokes a vague misty picture of a warm day and a rose-filled garden, a puppy barking, children laughing. I shake my head. I don’t know if that is a vision of home or just a happy dream.

  He takes my elbow and begins to clear a path through the throng and I realise we are pa
ssing over London Bridge, on foot, a thing I have never done before. Memory nudges again and I narrow my eyes, willing myself to remember something that will throw a little light on the reason why I am here. A gossamer word, a name floating in my mind, the name of someone I love, someone I must find, our future depends on it. Eve. But how did I lose her and why is it so important that she is found?

  Then another name penetrates the fog, like a shout this time, or an insult, a slap in the face. Francis. Francis Wareham!

  I stop short and my guide stops also. “Francis Wareham.” I withdraw my hand and shout above the noise of the crowd, heedless of their buffeting. “I am looking for Francis Wareham.”

  His laugh is not so merry this time but tinged with something darker, something menacing. He throws back his head, showing his rotten back teeth and the tidemark of dirt about his neck. “Well, you’ve found him all right. He is up there, look.”

  My reluctant eyes follow the line of his finger, to the sky above the gatehouse where a cluster of pikes point heavenward, each adorned with the tattered remnants of a traitor’s head.

  “Francis?” I know that is not the man I seek but at the sight of Dereham’s severed head my memory returns, slicing through my mind like a blade.

  “Katherine!” I cry, and my knees buckle as I remember the blood. The vivid, scarlet gore and poor, silly Katherine dying like a Queen, her blood coating my face at the moment her life was severed.

  I lift a hand to my forehead. It has dried now and the blood flakes at my touch to float down upon her prayer book. They are all that I have left of her.

  I clutch them tighter and raise my eyes again to the bleak and dreadful sight of Katherine’s lovers. Tom Culpepper and Francis Dereham and their blind, staring eyes look back at me. We are worlds apart now, separated by the narrow divide that splits the dead from the living; a divide that is so easily crossed.

  A few short months ago those men had been vigorously and misguidedly thinking to mock and cuckold their King. Now look what they are come to. How vain men are to run such risks for the sake of a pretty face, a high bosom and a girlish laugh. How trifling and sad the consequence. There will be no one to remember them, and their brash, short lives will be lost, like a drop of rain falling into the river.

  “I don’t 'ave all afternoon to tarry here …” His voice cuts into my thoughts and I shake myself, take a deep breath.

  “That isn’t Francis Wareham up there; it is Dereham, the traitor,” I say and, taking one last look, I turn to leave. His warm hand slides beneath my elbow again and he begins to fight a way through the crowd. I follow him as if I am in some sort of dream, a nightmare in which I don’t know who or where to run to. But by the time we reach the town gate, I have remembered I am Isabella and that I was a servant of the late Queen. At my request he helps me reach the one place I know I will be safe. I return to Richmond and the care of my friend, the Lady Anna.

  When Mother hears of my plight she sends for me right away and I take my leave of the Lady Anna and find myself bundled into a litter for the journey home to Bourne Manor. My head has ached for days and I rest my brow on the jolting cushions and close my eyes, trying to shut out the ugly images that haunt me. For just a little while I need to forget about Katherine, and about Eve.

  It will be better now. At home, in the bosom of my family, I will be able to rest and recuperate and grow strong again. If only the horses could travel faster, I cannot wait to be back at my father’s house that has always kept me safe.

  The bitter late February winds blow in beneath the leather curtain, and the first scatterings of snow drift like petals at the edge of my consciousness as I settle down to dream of Bourne in the summertime.

  But before we have gone five miles my bones are weary, the horses jolting and lurching over the hard rutted road. When at last we come to a halt at the door of my father’s manor, I am stiff with cold and climb like an old woman from the litter and shuffle into the comfort of the familiar hall, calling for my mother.

  Bess appears first, her smile as wide and plump as ever, her well-remembered voice cheering me as she helps me unfasten my cloak. “It’s good to have you home, My Lady,” she says. “Your mother is waiting in the solar.”

  I smooth the front of my hair, straighten my cap and go forward as quickly as my bulk allows. Father’s hounds gallop to greet me, their bark of welcome loud in the quiet of the hall. I push them away and turn to where she is waiting before the hearth.

  “Mother!” Warm in her embrace, I feel her shudder emotionally as she holds me, and I know that she is as glad to see me as I am to be with her again. Everything will be well now.

  “Let me look at you,” she says and while she notes my wan cheeks and bulging belly, I take note of her appearance.

  She has grown older and there are new lines about her eyes, anxiety scrawled upon her brow. I imagine that, should she remove her cap, her hair will be streaked with grey. Like any bereft mother she has not been left unmarked by the loss of Eve. “You are well, daughter?” With a nurturing smile she reaches out to stroke my belly, and I cover her hand with my own.

  “I am very well, Mother, or I will be now that I am home. And once the babe is born, I swear I will do all within my power to find Eve and bring her home.”

  My words are intended to paint her cheeks with a happier hue but instead her face clouds again and she shakes her head.

  “She is gone, child. We cannot bring back the dead … not any of them. The past is gone.”

  I open my mouth to argue but she shushes me and leads me closer to the fire to sit with her on the settle. I look about the hall at the rich hangings and the bright flames leaping in the hearth and feel sad. There is something missing, there will always be something missing now Eve has been taken from us. “Bella, my love,” Mother says, drawing my attention back to her, “you must be very brave for there is something I have to tell you.”

  Mother’s lips are moving and I can hear her voice, but it makes no sense. I shake my head, negating her words, but I am back in the nightmare, the one in which I am lost and the Earth is crumbling beneath my feet. The one where the people around me are slipping away, dissolving into a mist through which I cannot follow. I cannot grasp them, cannot hold them and keep them here … with me.

  “It was the sweating sickness.” She is weeping as she speaks, her face contorting with grief. “He was struck down suddenly and violently …” Her voice breaks and she droops her head, muffling her words with her handkerchief. “The doctors did all they could, but he was gone before a week was out.”

  “Father…” It cannot be true. I saw him last summer just before I left for the northern progress with the Queen. He was so very alive, so very robust … it cannot be true.

  It is more than I can bear. Leaping to my feet, I clench my fists, my senses reeling, my mind screaming. As the blood rushes from my head, I dig my fingers into my skull and fight against encroaching darkness. A chasm opens at my feet and I give myself up to it, prepare to fall, but Mother’s voice arrests me and I am dragged back to the horror of reality.

  Her soft words rush like poison into my ears. “And that is not all, my dear. I have to tell you that Anthony … your husband, was stricken with the fever too.”

  I try to focus on her face and find some comfort there but the skin on her grey cheeks hangs lose, her misery etched deep. She cannot ease me.

  “I am a widow? You are telling me that my husband died and no one thought to even tell me he was sick?”

  My child lurches in my womb and I sway, my head momentarily lolling. Mother is beside me, supporting me, forcing me back into the chair. My serene, dignified mother is kneeling on the cold stone floor at my feet. “No, no, Anthony lives, Bella. He is still very weak but he will live. He would have been there with you when you shared Katherine’s punishment otherwise. You know he would.”

  “Anthony lives?” Relief that my child will not be left fatherless surges through me, briefly compensating for the loss of
Father, but the feeling is quickly replaced with guilt. “I should have been here, Mother. Oh, why did he make me go on the progress with the King? I would have been content to stay at home with him.”

  Sorrow is heaped upon sorrow. I think of my staid husband lying alone in his sickbed and I grieve for the loss of my dear father. If only I’d had the time to say goodbye, to say the things I’d never thought to say. We never think to appreciate those who are close to us – we never take the time to tell them we love them – not until it is too late.

  “You are distraught, Bella, you cannot be everywhere, for everyone. Take comfort that you were with your mistress when she needed you at the end.”

  Mother strokes my hair, murmurs soft words, and when Bess appears with a jug of wine she holds the cup to my lips and helps me drink.

  “We must get you to bed. You are exhausted and need to rest. We must all think of the next generation, look to the future and the child you bear. We will be fine, you and I, just wait and see.”

  Isabella March 1542

  The next day dawns grey, and the rain that lashes the casement keeps everyone with any sense indoors. Not that I have a wish to go anywhere. I am exhausted, the trials of the last few weeks crashing around inside my head, leaving me drained of energy. All morning I lay abed watching Bess, who has been taken from her usual duties to attend me, sort through my old linen closet. But lying abed has never suited me. No matter what it may bring, I’ve always liked to greet the day head-on. Now, however, I am listless and tired and my pillow is too soft.

  I dream of the past. “It is funny, Bess, how it always seems to have been so sunny when we were little. These days the sun never shines so brightly.”

  “Well, it is March, My Lady, and the winter is loath to leave us this year.” She pauses for a moment and adds quietly, “Besides, I think, we only tend to think on happy times, and happy times always seem sunny.”