The May Bride

by Suzannah Dunn

  It was easy enough to oblige. Squinting at her through the angled sunshine, I asked, ‘What?’

  Her chin tilted upwards, her head to one side. ‘Edward’s going to war,’ deliberately sing-song, strained, high-pitched as if through gritted teeth.

  I nearly dropped the bowl. ‘What?’ Even though I didn’t know what she meant, it hit me hard, as surely she would have known it would: that word, war. And, anyway, what war? There was no war! And Edward? Even if there was a war, why would Edward be going to it?

  The same tone, her head tilting to the other side: ‘He’s off to conquer France.’ As if, by doing so, he was defying her.

  Point taken – she was dismayed and, understandably, beneath the bluster, afraid – but I needed to know what was going on; I needed her to stop the bizarre carry-on and explain what was actually happening.

  No chance, though, because now she was exclaiming, ‘Dust off the banner!’ and it was caustic: the deliberately badly feigned jollity, the icy eyes.

  Our Seymour family banner, which our father had earned in battle in France when I was three or four. By all accounts it’d been well earned, and it was beautiful, but still, like Edward it was suffering Katherine’s derision. Then, just as suddenly, she seemed to lose patience with herself and dropped the indignation to tell me straight, despite keeping the fierce fold of arms and relating the explanation flatly to make quite clear that she didn’t endorse it. A messenger, she said, had just arrived from the Duke of Suffolk, and Edward was required to go as a junior commander in an army to France. Some French duke was ready to move against his monarch, she said, and the other dukes were likely to rally behind him, and various countries had pledged their support; so this, now, would probably be the end of the French king. Our own king had a chance, at last, to reclaim France for England.

  I was still trying to take it all in when she said they were aiming to sail on St Matthew’s eve, in less than two weeks’ time. So all the preparations and Edward’s journey to Dover would have to be done by then. Flabbergasted, I backtracked to the beginning: ‘Edward just told you all this?’

  She nodded with grim satisfaction. ‘Just now, in front of your mother and father.’

  And I got it: that was what he’d done wrong, that was how he’d upset her. And, actually, I felt it, too: the insensitivity of announcing to his new wife in front of his parents that he was off to battle. Not taking her to one side to break the news but treating her as if she were just anyone else, as if she were any one of us. He should’ve taken her to one side and held her; he should’ve known to do that. My perfect brother should’ve known very well to do that. What on earth was the matter with him?

  Spotting that she’d snared my sympathy, she hauled it in on a deep breath that allowed her to relinquish the rigid stance, the belligerence, and give herself up to fear, let it come for her. Breaking away from me, she paced, circling, hugging herself, holding herself together, each breath shuddery and her eyes huge with unshed tears. Unnerved, I rushed to placate her, ‘He’ll be all right, he’ll be fine,’ but even as I was urging her to believe it, I didn’t know if I did. It did stop her panic, though: she halted, drew herself up tall, gave me a look; a full, frank look but one that I failed to read, only feeling the force of it, and then was off, at a pace, back towards the house.

  I followed, losing ground to her as each of her long-legged strides threw more distance back at me. Behind her, I banged through the door into the house and Bear, startled somewhere, hedged her bets with a bark.

  Rattling into Hall, breathless, I almost ran into her, standing with my mother: the two of them standing side by side in what was for me a bewildering show of unity and stoicism. It was as if I’d imagined Katherine’s distress only a moment ago in the garden.

  My mother’s benign moon face turned to me: ‘Ah! Jane, this is Mr Wellbelove, the Duke of Suffolk’s man,’ and she gestured towards an unshaven, grimy man sitting at one of the tables. My mother meant me to offer a careful smile, but the man and I stared at each other. His mouth was full and rotating; he was being amply refreshed, but his eyes were those of a man who’d been riding all day long for several days. As was his smell. Nevertheless, Thomas was lounging beside him as if they made a team. Edward was nowhere to be seen: he’d already gone, I’d later learn, to round up his men.

  My mother began telling me what I already knew from Katherine, finishing with, ‘And isn’t that such an honour?’ Her smile permitted no dissent, but Katherine wouldn’t be told. Close enough beside my mother to be invisible to her, my sister-in-law gave me a look that placed herself firmly in opposition.

  Edward spent the five frantic days before his departure doing the duty of a knight’s heir: calling upon the men in Wolf Hall’s surrounding villages to join him in the king’s army. Literally calling upon them: going from door to door to visit every family, hunkering down on earth floors to explain the situation to the best of his knowledge, offering reassurances where possible, promising assistance in the form of provisions and helping to plan how the man’s work might be covered in his absence. He would have been only too aware of the magnitude of what he was asking of those families: not only that they hand over the head of household to go to war on foreign soil but that they do so at the start of the farming year when the heavy work needed to be done, the breaking up of the soil and the ploughing, to say nothing of the November slaughter and the late-autumn foraging for firewood, the endless wood-chopping.

  When he returned home in the evenings, he didn’t come into the parlour. We’d hear the closing of the main door and his footsteps across Hall, heading towards the kitchen; he was going to find himself some supper. No chess games for him, no farm gossip with Harry and his father, no lute-strumming with Thomas while we girls worked at our embroidery and Dottie and Margie were permitted the occasional, muted clapping game. He needed to eat, and he needed to get to bed.

  That shutting of the door would raise our heads and there we all were, looking at one another but blankly, because what we were really doing was listening, dredging the sounds of the door and the footsteps for what we could find in them. Despair, or fear, or just resignation? Perhaps even exhilaration after a successful day, although that was less likely because, after all, this was Edward and he’d been mustering men for battle.

  Listening to him making his way to the kitchen, I’d be wondering what he might find there and in what state – the chances of it still being warm, being appetising – and thinking how I might improve it, perhaps by making up some more sauce. Beside me, my mother was resisting her own urge to follow him into the kitchen and fuss around him, so I had to do the same. If Katherine hadn’t been there, if this had been before their marriage, my mother would have got up and gone to him, I knew. But now, that was for his wife to do. So she didn’t go. Nor, though, did Katherine.

  Our snapping to attention there in the parlour every evening was also probably because we felt guilty to be resting up there, with our stomachs full. Actually, we too were working hard those days, from first light until last. We girls were working under my mother’s direction because she knew exactly what was to be done; she’d done it all, twelve years before, for my father. Her primary concern was that her son, and his men as much as she could see to it, be protected from the wet and cold, and she began where it mattered most, sending for the cobbler, who spent a long day repairing and reinforcing Edward’s boots along with those of anyone who could be persuaded to come up to Wolf Hall and hang around, or better still go back to work in stocking feet. That first day, the men of Wolf Hall were small-stepping and soft-treading, flinching and wincing their way over courtyard cobbles.

  Meanwhile, she rummaged in chests and piles of laundry for hose that could be spared, advancing on me and Katherine time and again with numerous pairs looped over her forearm for patching and reinforcing. Despite the gravity of the situation, Katherine and I had to stifle giggles at the sight of her draped so extravagantly in men’s hose. She, of course, was oblivious. No
r, for once, was she interested in the quality of our darning; on the contrary, she was actively dismissive of it, urging us to work with regard only for speed, which we found hard because it went against everything we’d ever learned. Nevertheless, despite the demanding pace of work and the household’s air of solemnity, we couldn’t quite resist holding up each and every pair of hose in order to speculate from the particular pattern of wear as to the identity of its owner.

  With boots and hose under way, my mother turned her attention on the second day of preparations to the other extremities, despatching Harry to Salisbury to buy all the gloves that he could find. Under any other circumstances, Thomas would have insisted on going with him, but on this occasion he chose to stay home to help my father with the weaponry and armour, the horses and carts. He worked dishevelled among the men in the courtyard – no jerkin, cap discarded, shirt indecently unbuttoned and filthy where he’d wiped his armour-polishing hands down it with spectacular disregard for those who did the laundry – and then came into dinner reeking of whatever he’d been working into saddles and bridles or smearing down bowstrings. None of which could have been said of my father, of course, who remained as calm and collected as ever, despite, no doubt, working just as hard.

  Once, when Thomas spotted Katherine and me taking a break at the day-room window, he hollered up to us, ‘I’m off to the brook for a strip-off,’ jubilant, as if scoring a victory, which in a way he was, over decorum, and flinging up both arms, perhaps purely an expansive gesture but perhaps suggestive of submitting to a removal of his shirt. Katherine turned to me, genuinely affronted and making no effort to hide it. ‘He is so . . .’ and she frowned, considering the best word, ‘. . . unnecessary.’

  I laughed, because it seemed to me, back in those days, that infuriating though Thomas was, if he could be said to have a glory, then that, surely, was it.

  Closing the casement on him, she turned circumspect: ‘Thomas wishes he was going, doesn’t he? He wishes it was him who was going.’

  The latter was more accurate, I suspected: he’d want to replace Edward rather than merely accompany him.

  ‘He thinks he’s better, doesn’t he?’ But there was no accusation in it: it was mere observation. ‘A better—’ and she peeked down from the window as if to assess him, to ascertain how he might indeed be better than Edward. A better rider? A better shot? ‘Better with the men,’ she decided.

  I had to admit: ‘Yes, I think he does.’

  ‘And is he?’ Dispassionate, her asking; a fair question.

  Not one, though, to which I knew the answer. For all Edward’s tireless efforts, it was possible – we both knew it – that Thomas was at least as favourably regarded by the men. Sitting down, retrieving her sewing, Katherine smiled, but humourlessly. ‘He’d miss his mother, though.’ It was intended as a simple put-down, but actually she was more right than she knew.

  That day, I remember, the real baby of the family was busy gathering goose feathers for the fletcher, while his little sisters sat alongside us in the day room, cutting an old scarlet petticoat into strips so that they could stitch St George crosses onto jackets. Lil and Moll were turning any other scraps into bandages. And on the third day, a bale of canvas was at our disposal, too, donated by the Dormers; and my mother – having drawn up a simple pattern – put Elizabeth to work cutting out and then stitching together basic canvas jackets. A few large pieces, a big needle, coarse thread and crude stitches: the ideal needlework for needle-shy Elizabeth, who spread her paraphernalia over the entire room and was tediously vocal on the subject of her newfound expertise.

  For a rest from her as much as from our own stitching, Katherine and I went outside mid-morning, ostensibly to check on the troughs of crab apples intended for verjuice. Someone would need to give them a quick mashing, that was our excuse. There in the courtyard was Will Dormer, having delivered that bale of canvas then stayed around to help Thomas. Spotting us at the troughs, he approached with that loathsome strenuous non-chalance of his.

  Katherine heaved a sigh of relief when greeting him, as if here at last came someone sympathetic to the various privations she was having to suffer. I was surprised: she’d been throwing herself into her work and of course I knew she was unhappy at Edward’s impending departure, but it was news to me that she’d been finding the day such an endurance, let alone that Will Dormer was the one to whom she’d choose to unburden. And more surprises were in store. She and Will Dormer stood side by side to look over the scene of the Seymour household preparing to send its heir to war, and in their shared stance I detected opposition. Will Dormer blew into his cheeks to signify a certain scepticism and, on cue, Katherine folded her arms, drawing herself up. Judgement was being passed, I realised, and unfavourably.

  Despite not grasping the nature of my family’s alleged failing, I couldn’t help but feel obliged to apologise for it – that was what seemed to be being called for, even as I baulked at it – and I was stung because never before had my sister-in-law so much as hinted that it mattered to her that I was a blood Seymour. Inwardly, I bristled, because we were allies, weren’t we? Friends. Like sisters, but better. I was who I was; how could I help having been born a Seymour? There she was, though, dismissing me as just another one of them. And to impress Will Dormer.

  And worse was to come. Will Dormer was showing her his hand. I couldn’t see it, the angle was wrong, but her reaction was a sharp intake of breath, so I craned to discover that somehow, during whatever he’d been doing with Thomas, he’d suffered a cut to the left index finger; not dreadful, but fairly bloody. He was turning it over to Katherine for her opinion. She didn’t take his hand but laid her fingertips on it to encourage him to tilt it further towards her and, after closer inspection, decided, ‘You need that dressed,’ at which he blew into his cheeks again. She insisted, ‘No, really,’ then laughed: ‘Ol’ Ma Seymour will have something for it,’ and he, too, laughed, so that my mother became a joke between them. ‘Or,’ Katherine said, ‘Jane’ll do it,’ and then she was off, just off and away with a self-important flourish to the turn and a skip in her step to show it as deliberate and, to her, gratifying, this abandoning of us in each other’s company.

  What on earth was she doing? Didn’t she know that I couldn’t stand him? She damn well did know; there was no way she couldn’t know. What was she thinking, then? That Will and I needed to be shown what was good for us, and would end up grateful to her? Or perhaps she wasn’t thinking at all, but simply enjoying that turn on her heel for what it was. Father James came suddenly to mind, poor old Father James and the bunny face, the cat’s tongue. This was more than play, though, I knew; there was a cruelty to this; a small cruelty, maybe, and deep down, but it was there nonetheless. I appreciated that she was out of sorts, and I understood why, but I felt she really shouldn’t be taking it out on me.

  I could almost hear Will Dormer calculating how he might best be rid of me but, unfortunately, I couldn’t do him the favour of following Katherine across the cobbles; she’d designated me to take care of a wound in full knowledge that it was something from which I couldn’t possibly walk away. I’d have to go through the motions of examining it. He didn’t look at me; looked at the finger instead, turning it this way and that but solely to benefit his own viewing. Then, just as I was about to offer, reluctantly, to clean it up, he pronounced, ‘It’s fine, thanks,’ and strode off to rejoin the men. And so there I was, left alone, having to pretend even to myself that my humiliation hadn’t happened and especially not at the hands of someone whom, until then, I’d completely trusted.

  For the final two days before Edward’s departure, my mother had us turn our attention to his stomach, working from her recipes to cook sustaining snacks which, she said, were packable and portable. Those were strange, difficult days. First came biscuits, the mixture for which was so dry and dense that it adhered to itself and to the bowls, spoons, rolling surfaces, cutters and, of course, our hands, thwarting us further by sticking to anything with
which we tried to prise it from anything else. It had us in its clutches: clumps wedged between our fingers, and our palms caked. Eventually, patience depleted, Katherine stuck up a mixture-obliterated hand and demanded with considerable vehemence, ‘Who would ever want to eat this?’

  A fair point, in a way, but I felt obliged to defend my mother and anyway there was some truth in what I knew she would say: ‘Well, if you had nothing else . . .’

  Katherine allowed it, but only grudgingly: ‘I suppose so.’

  After the disastrous biscuits came fruit that was to be boiled to a pulp and left overnight in trays on the hearth to dry into leathery sheets that could then be sliced into strips, which meant that we suffered a long day of the slumping of pear flesh beneath the knife and the precipitous slide of the blade through apple flesh. Our hands which, the day before, had been coated were now exposed, our fingertips nicked and notched, the striations welling with juice.

  Katherine said very little all afternoon, but I recall her once offering up, wistfully and apropos of nothing, that Edward would miss Harvest Festival, which struck me as an odd remark because he’d be missing so much else besides. Harvest Festival was just the one day and, as far as I knew, not even one to which he was particularly attached. Even if the expedition ended up being entirely uneventful, Edward’s missing of Harvest Festival would be for him, I imagined, the very least of it. I found Katherine hard to fathom, during those two long days, and she unnerved me.

  And daytimes were the least of it. While we’d been occupied trying to keep Edward warm and stave off the worst of his hunger, my mother had been making sure to be the one who would save his life, retreating to the still room to concoct salves and tinctures, syrups and ointments from poppy seeds, cloves, lavender and rosehips, spooning or decanting them into tiny stoppered or sealed pots where they’d be ready for the cleansing and soothing of wounds and illnesses. Come each evening, though, it was Katherine who was engaged on a special mission and it’d happened as she’d predicted: that very first evening, when the duke’s messenger had retired early and Edward was in Great Bedwyn enlisting the village men, my mother had decided we should retrieve the family banner from storage.