“I never rammed one,” said Carew. “They always got out of the way in time and I let them—I’d come at them from an angle that would force them right off course. Harte, I need to know…”
“It’s all right. I rarely go to sea at this time of year, but the Pretty Doe can sail the moment the tide is right, and three friends of yours are aboard. You sent them on ahead, I think, after meeting this good lady on the road.”
“They’re here? They’ve found you?”
“They turned the horses loose last night, somewhere just east of here—got to the sea on foot, in the dark, stole a dinghy and sneaked into the harbour here before dawn. At first light they saw the name Pretty Doe on this ship’s hull and then they saw me on deck and hailed me. I’ve been freshening up her paintwork and sleeping aboard. They’re an enterprising trio! You must have braved the town guards.”
“We did,” said Jane. “But we told them I was visiting a sick cousin and these men are my escort.”
“You’d better have a sick cousin to visit,” said Carew. “I’ll give you a note to take to another friend of mine in Weymouth. He’ll let you stay in his house for a few days and he’ll retire convincingly to bed if necessary. Show us aboard, if you will, Harte. How long before we can sail?”
“An hour and a half yet till the tide’s high enough. The wind’s right. I’ve wine and good food on the ship, if you want it.”
“I’ll have to part from you here.” Peter turned to look at Jane, his dark eyes serious. “But will you take wine with me first? While I write the note for you, to your pretend cousin?”
He did not say aloud that he wished to be left alone with her, but Harte, glancing shrewdly from one to the other, saw to it that when they were all on the ship and had greeted Carew’s three friends, Sir Peter and his female companion were shown to a well-furnished cabin, with a bed and seats and a table on which were writing materials, a jug of wine, two pewter goblets and a platter of cold meat and fresh bread.
Jane poured the wine and they sat at the table to eat and drink. Carew managed with one hand while the other wrote the letter to his friend in Weymouth. Then he folded and sealed it, handed it to Jane and said, “We have an hour. We may never meet again. This could be the last time we are ever in each other’s company. You’ve been a good friend to me, Mistress Allerbrook, a shield against enemy swords. Why? Just because I once snatched you out of King Henry’s grasp?”
It was an impossible question to answer truthfully. Just to be alone with him made her pulse uneven and she knew that her eyes were fixed on him much too intently. She was trying to memorize him, inch by inch, so that she would have that memory to look at when Sir Peter Carew himself was far away.
“I ought to be angry with you,” she said. “For taking Stephen.”
“He’s old enough to make up his own mind. That nephew of yours is a man, my dear, not a boy.”
“I’ve plans for him, if he survives,” Jane said. “I hope to get both him and my own son into good households for a year or two, maybe with chances to attend the court. I thought Sir Edmund Flaxton might help. And then—Sir Peter, did you know that Dorothy Palmer was dead?”
“No, though I know it was expected.”
“Well, she’s gone and I’m looking after her little girl, Blanche, until Ralph comes home, if he ever does! Blanche will be beautiful one day and she’s an heiress. When she’s old enough, she and Stephen might make a match of it. It would provide for him. He’ll have nothing otherwise.”
Carew paused before he answered and when he did, the words fell into a curious pool of quietness between them. “I hope there’ll be affection between them, as well,” he said.
The ship rocked a little. “The tide’s rising,” he said. “Our time’s growing short. Don’t underestimate affection in marriage, Jane.”
Carefully she said, “I hope that your own marriage is happy.”
“It’s successful, though we’ve often been apart. Margaret is nobly born and wealthy. She’s the daughter of a knight and the widow of a baron. She’s very dignified, very honourable, very loyal. We have never quarrelled in any way. I haven’t a word of complaint about Margaret.”
“Are there any children?”
“No. It seems that God has not blessed her with fertility.”
“I am sorry. Is she beautiful?” Jane asked.
“She’s handsome enough. You’re the one who’s beautiful, Jane. You’re lovely, and so wholesome. There’s not a flaw in your skin. Your hair has the gloss of a beechnut washed by the dew. Your eyes are soft, and they shine. Are they shining for me?”
Jane, her pulse now thumping wildly, could not answer.
“Time’s going,” Carew said. “And we’re wasting it, talking about Stephen and Blanche and Margaret. Why did you help me? Just gratitude? Or devotion to the Protestant cause? Or because you love me?”
One had one’s dignity. “How can I love you? I hardly know you. I never saw you after you brought me back from court, until you rode in out of nowhere just before Christmas, raising men for a rebellion!”
“I think,” said Carew, “that you fell in love with me on the ride home from court. I saw it in your face. I saw it again when I came to Allerbrook before Christmas. But…”
“I would never have made a suitable bride.” She tried to quell that clamouring pulse and speak dispassionately, but her voice shook all the same. She raised her chin and held on determinedly to that unsteady dignity. “No title and no dowry.”
“And you resent being thought unworthy for such reasons? I’m not surprised. And yet you helped me, at great risk to yourself. My dear Jane.”
He rose, came to her, raised her to her feet, put his arms around her and then, as he had done in the hall at Allerbrook, he put his mouth on hers and any attempt to remain aloof and dignified was wiped out. Her body paid not the slightest attention. Without her permission it moulded itself to him; without her consent, her mouth opened under his.
When at last the kiss ended, he did not let her go. Instead, he said, “Is this what you want, Jane? Is this how I can repay you? I would be happy if so, for I have never desired a woman in my life as much as I desire you now. And it may be our only chance. It may be once, and once only. Will you seize the day? It’s for you to say, not for me.”
The bed was inviting, with a moleskin coverlet and smooth linen, a feather mattress and damask hangings of grey-green and soft rose. Jane did not afterward remember whether she had said yes to him in words, nor exactly how they came to be lying on the coverlet, nor how they shed their clothes. She heard herself, for the first time ever, use his name without any title. Over and over again she whispered, “Peter!” in gratitude and delight, knowing that a hunger many years old was at last to be satisfied, and a long emptiness filled.
It was so different from anything she had known with Harry. With Harry she had endured, obeyed and gone through the motions of affection, but after the first time, which had been uncomfortable though not as bad as she had feared, the business had been simply null, painless, but without any pleasure and usually performed when she was exhausted and longing for sleep. The strange yearning which sometimes afflicted her on languorous summer nights, after Harry’s illness had ended lovemaking, had told her that something more was possible, something beyond her experience, but only now did she discover what it was.
This…it was as though her body were a shore, over which a slow tide of joy was rising, gathering strength as it advanced. At the end, it was as though some huge and astoundingly warm breaker had crashed over her and she was left throbbing with the reverberation of it, drenched in happiness. Soaked in sweat and aglow, from her damp, disordered hair to her very toes.
Presently he said, “I wish we could lie in each other’s arms forever, but we can’t. You must dress, and make yourself tidy enough to deceive your groom and your chaplain into thinking that all we’ve done is talk, and then go ashore with the letter I gave you. Once and once only, but oh, Jane, I will never for
get it.”
“Nor I. Nor I.”
He sat up sharply. “Jane, if anything happens…as a result of this…”
“I will have to find myself another Harry Hudd,” said Jane.
“Ralph Palmer told me about him. Neither of us approved. I’ll write you another note, for my cousin, Thomas Carew of Haccombe, in Devon. Carews look after their kin. If you conceive, he’ll see someone in my family gives the baby a home. Have the child somewhere where you’re not known. Or you might marry Ralph Palmer.” He was dressing and reaching for the inkstand simultaneously. “I know he likes you and he’s my friend and no prude. He’d probably oblige. I’d be jealous, but it might be an answer.”
“I would never marry Ralph,” said Jane. “I knew that even before today. Now that I truly know the difference between you, I know it twice over. I’ll take the note, just in case. Thank you. God go with you, Peter.”
“And with you.”
She did not go at once to the home of Peter’s friend in the town but waited on the quay until the Pretty Doe sailed and stood there to watch the vessel put out to sea. It hurt. It astounded her how deep and awful the hurt was. It was almost physical, a dragging misery in her very guts. It was also a shadow of the long loneliness to come. He would not return to her.
He probably did love her, she thought, as much as he could love any woman. But for all his talk of jealousy, she knew he did not feel anything like the love and need she felt for him. The very way he had spoken of his marriage, the way he had parted from her, kindly but without anything like the grief she felt, had told her the truth. He was the kind of man who kept love in a separate compartment, while practical living, war and adventure and advantageous marriage were on the other side of a dividing wall.
And she must endure in silence. She could confide in no one. If she cried, she must do so secretly. Unless, of course, there was a baby and she had to go to his family, and they were not likely to show her much sympathy.
That, as it turned out, was not required of her. She knew two days later that there would be no child. It was a great relief. As well as a sorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Blanche in Bloom
1554
“When the cows are in milk again,” Jane said to Blanche as she showed her around the dairy, “I’ll teach you to make clotted cream. You were never shown at home?”
“No.” Blanche shook her head. “The chaplain taught me reading and writing and Latin, too, because Mother said that these days, ladies are supposed to know some Latin. Embroidery, music and dancing, things like that, she taught me herself. But I’d like to learn dairy work.”
“And so you shall. And you’ll go on with the other things. Your father would want that. Dr. Spenlove will study with you and I can teach you the rest—that is, if you stay here.”
“I’d like to stay. I don’t miss my mother much,” said Blanche sadly, looking down at her feet. “Is that very wrong?”
“Well…” Remembering what Dorothy had been like, Jane found this difficult to answer. “Many people would be upset to hear you say so, so perhaps you shouldn’t. She was very ill, you know. You can say that her sickness made you unhappy, and you are glad she isn’t suffering anymore.”
“Thank you. I’ll do that,” said Blanche, brightening.
She was a very pretty child with no trace of Dorothy’s sullenness, and she was slender where Dorothy at her age had already been plump. She had had smallpox at one time, but it had left only a few tiny marks near her hairline and her skin was otherwise clear.
Her hair was a pleasing fawn colour, richer than Dorothy’s mouse, and her eyes were beautiful. Dorothy’s had been an indeterminate grey and Ralph’s were dark, but Blanche’s eyes were the subtle green-brown shade known as hazel. The effect was changeable—sometimes dark, sometimes a shifting green like the light under the trees in Allerbrook combe in summer. When she laughed, they sparkled like sunshine through leaves. But she didn’t laugh as often as a child should. Jane thought it a pity.
Dr. Spenlove had noticed Blanche’s eyes. He had now completed his second set of handwritten and illuminated Gospels, for another Taunton gentleman who loved the beauty of such manuscripts. Having done so, he asked if he might make a miniature portrait of Blanche. “I make tiny drawings for my illuminated capital letters and borders. I’d like to try my hand at a portrait and Blanche would be a charming subject.” He had just finished the miniature, producing an excellent likeness, delicately drawn and painted. He had even caught the rare sparkle of laughter in those eyes.
In time, Jane hoped, it would appear more often. Blanche had probably not had an easy, certainly not a frivolous, childhood. She danced well, but seemed to regard it as just another accomplishment she was expected to acquire, like embroidery stitches and Latin grammar. She was shy and very well behaved. Spenlove had remarked that the child often seemed older than her years.
Jane sometimes felt older than her own years. For there was still no news of either Ralph Palmer or Stephen. Whatever had happened about the intended rebellion, no word had found its way to Allerbrook.
The dairy was cold. “We shall have snow by tomorrow,” she said. “Come back to the hall—it’s warmer there.”
Peggy was sitting by the hearth with Lisa. Since Christmas, Peggy had slowed down a great deal and Jane had told her to take her ease; Letty and Beth were there to do most of the work. Letty, though pockmarks were common enough and she was not as unattractive as she thought, had resisted all approaches, while Beth had married one of the Searle family two years ago, but had lost her husband to a winter fever and had not remarried. Lisa was staying on as well, to help out with sewing. There was always plenty of that. “The house isn’t short of hands,” Jane had said, reassuring Peggy. “You’ll always have a place here.”
Lisa was leaning forward to put more wood on the fire as Jane and Blanche came in, and Jane, glancing at the wood basket by the hearth, saw that it needed replenishing. Peggy, whose eyesight was still healthy enough, saw the glance and laughed.
“There’s more wood bein’ chopped. See out of the window.”
Jane went to look and saw Tobias and Tim Snowe’s eldest son, twelve-year-old Paul, pulling branches out of the woodshed and hacking them into convenient sizes. Every autumn, branches were cut in the woods of the combe and stacked in the shed to dry. “Excellent,” said Jane. “We can be generous with the fuel. Blanche, if you take a candle and sit by a window, you can still be warm but you’ll have light enough to practise your embroidery.”
“My workbasket is in the parlour,” Blanche said. “I’ll fetch it.”
“She’s a sweet-natured child. Nothing like her mother,” Lisa said, watching her go.
“Was Dorothy very difficult?” Jane asked. “I’ve never discussed her with you, but I imagine caring for her wasn’t easy.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Lisa truthfully. “But she was a sick woman the last couple of years. She suffered. It was bad for the child to see it. She’ll blossom here, given time.”
“Yes, indeed. I’ve been thinking of her future. If—”
“Mistress Allerbrook!” Blanche, without her workbasket, came tearing down the steps from the parlour. “There’s someone coming! I saw him from the parlour window! He’s wearing a helmet and he’s on foot and Tobias and Paul are running to meet him!”
“What?” Jane made for the yard. Tobias and Paul were coming across it, helping another man, who could only walk slowly and whose cloak seemed to hang awkwardly over his left arm. “Stephen!” Jane gasped.
“Hullo,” said Stephen. “Sorry to come back like this. Wounded, I’m afraid.”
“Bring him into the hall!” said Jane.
When they got him inside and onto a settle, Jane lifted the cloak away and saw that his left arm was awkwardly bound across his chest on top of a stained breastplate with some alarming scratches on it.
“What happened?” she said.
“I’ve been chased,” he said.
“The queen’s men are everywhere. It’s all over. Thomas Wyatt’s in the Tower. Lady Jane Grey’s been beheaded—the queen won’t let anyone live who might be a focus for another rebellion. Her husband, Guilford Dudley, he’s been beheaded, too. Lady Jane’s father, he’s to go the same way, for supporting Wyatt. I was with Wyatt—he was taken near London. I got away. So did others, but…”
His voice faded and his eyes closed. His head sagged forward as though the helmet were too heavy. Jane removed it and then gently unwound the wrappings around his left forearm, uncovering an ugly slash from the elbow almost to the wrist. It was on the outer side and had not touched an artery, but it was inflamed and suppurating. What could be seen of his face, under several days’ growth of beard, was grey-tinged with a flushed patch on each cheekbone.
“I’ll get some medicines for him,” said Peggy. “Come, Blanche. You can learn something about remedies. And he’ll need hot water, too.”
“Thought I’d got away,” Stephen said, opening his eyes. “Tried to avoid towns. But I ran into a squad of local soldiers near Taunton, and they were after me at once. A man with armour on, scurrying along with his back to London—he’s a suspicious object.”
“Did they know what had happened in London?” Tobias asked, puzzled. “Did they know fugitives would come this way? But how?”
“Royal messengers ride like demons and every fair-sized town has an innkeeper paid to keep a fresh horse or two in his stable. County towns have their own teams of messengers. News can spread fast.”
Stephen closed his eyes again, but went on talking. “Long before I got to Somerset, it was known there’d been west-countrymen with Wyatt, and that some of them had got away. I fought my way free of the soldiers near Taunton—that’s where I got wounded. But they wounded Ginger, too. He got me to safety, clever little pony, but he fell down under me half an hour later. He’s dead. That was yesterday, in the evening. I walked on through the night. I haven’t eaten since midday yesterday….”
The House of Allerbrook Page 27