Roses in the Tempest

by Jeri Westerson

  She smiled. “An ‘old married couple’ indeed!” She chuckled and hid her yellowed teeth behind her hand. “We are what we are, Thomas, wrinkled and gray.”

  I straightened and pulled at my doublet. “Speak for yourself!”

  She laughed, and her pain seemed to give way at last. Like a baby chick tearing through the membrane of shell and nest, Isabella’s eyes took in the world as if for the first time. She even deeply inhaled, taking in something new and restorative. Perhaps her old self.

  I placed the bundle into her hands. Its soil sprinkled across my jerkin. “Plant this. Do not doubt that I will check on it from time to time to make certain you are properly caring for my gift. I do not give gifts lightly, madam.”

  “Nor do I accept them lightly.” She nodded courteously.

  “You were always a strong woman, Isabella,” I said looking out past the fields. “Come back like these roses. It tears my heart to see you so sad. Restore that garden. Keep the memory of Blackladies alive, as I shall make it alive.”

  She raised her face to me. “I do have a way with roses…and with gardens.” She looked at the spindly bundle tucked in her arm. “Roses are tenacious things.”

  With relief I hugged her shoulders and sighed, wondering what the spying eyes of her sister were reading from this encounter. “Tell me, Isabella, is it so very difficult, this new life?”

  She rocked her head against mine for a moment—like old friends—and she sighed. “Not difficult. Just…different. And lonely.”

  “Lonely? But you are with your own kin.”

  She shook her head and pressed her lips together. “I think of Dame Alice and Dame Cristabell and Dame Felicia as my kin now, Thomas. Odd that my own family seem like strangers to me.”

  “Yes,” I said, squeezing her shoulders once more before letting her go. “I can see how that can be.”

  “How fares Alice?”

  “She is well and content in my household. I fear I shared with her many memories of you.” Isabella blushed and I laughed to see it. “Yes. You remember.”

  “I recall some stories about you, Lord Giffard, but I am too much of a lady to share them with anyone.”

  “And I thank you for that,” I said with a bow.

  We gazed silently across the fields just as the mist lifted. Green buds speckled the dark soil as far as our eyes could see.

  “How is Blackladies?” she asked suddenly.

  “Strange you should ask. Tomorrow I go to see to its…its rebuilding.”

  “You need not spare me. You mean they are going to tear it down.”

  I flicked my gaze at her and saw her eyes were dry. “Yes, Madam,” I said soberly.

  Her hoarse laugh startled me and I looked at her. “I am imagining Thomas Giffard living on the same stones as generations of nuns. I can’t help but laugh at such a thing.”

  I chuckled nervously. “Faith, Madam! I never had that thought in my head…until now. Do you think I will be haunted?”

  Her eyes—as always—pierced through mine. “Not by them, I think.”

  “Only one,” I agreed.

  She seemed to wear a satisfied grin and I turned my gaze back to the countryside and its sky clouding up in gray puffs. “Isabella,” I said softly, “I have news for you. I have a new daughter. She…she is christened…Isabel.”

  She flattened her expression, but it was one I knew well. It seemed to say to me, “Incautious, Thomas.” Then she turned to me and examined my face as if memorizing each contour, from my proud nose to the wrinkles at my eyes. “I am glad you came. It was as if I was in a dream. Nothing seemed real.”

  “I have awakened you.”

  “Yes, Thomas.” She did not cease her scrutiny of my face until her eyes took on a devilish glint—a look I have not seen her wear in thirty years. “You are a terribly handsome man, Thomas Giffard.”

  My eyes widened at such bold words. For a moment, I was speechless. “Isabella!” I sputtered. “I…I am…flattered.”

  “It was not meant to flatter. It was to tell you true what I have always known. And I think…I shall kiss you.”

  Before I could speak, she reached up and with her free hand on my cheek, she planted a firm kiss on my lips. It was not a lover’s kiss—not such as I would have liked to have given her—but it was instead the kiss of a longtime friend.

  There was a playful jaunt to her mouth when she released me, and it echoed my own. “Why Isabella! What would your sisters say to that?”

  Her boldness faded, replaced by a blush. She clutched the rose bush tightly. “I do not know. There would be words, that much is certain.” She glanced back at the house. “I have scandalized Agnes again, no doubt.”

  She was merry, and it was a balm to see it. I risked it all by running my hand around her waist. “Then let her be thoroughly scandalized with this.” She did not shy this time. She raised her face boldly to mine. My mouth dipped to caress hers and lingered gently, tenderly. It was both ardent and chaste. We were lovers who were not lovers, and so we kissed like those in a dream.

  When I withdrew from her she smiled at me. “Shame, Thomas,” she said, though she had no look of shame in her eyes.

  “Perhaps I should go,” I said. I stepped back and bowed formally before straightening. “Will I be welcomed back, Lady Prioress?”

  My question, an echo of one asked so many years ago, also made her smile. “If it is your will, Lord Giffard. How can I ever stop you?”

  I said nothing more as I swiftly left the grounds. I do not give my gifts lightly.

  -----

  I left Swynnerton and arrived at Blackladies the next day for the unpleasant task of watching them tear down the roof. No nestlings shall return to the roost, so it was declared. The roof must go before any new construction was to take place. And so, as an Usher of the King’s Chamber, I was obligated to follow the letter of the law, lest His Majesty turn the priory over to a less worthy man.

  I watched from the edge of a copse as they pulled the rafters down. A great cloud of dust billowed as wood and stone filled the courtyard. Only when the dust dispersed did I urge my stallion closer. He picked with his heavy hoofs over the new rubble, and I tried to envision the place remade into my new residence.

  The rubble was deep, and so I dismounted and climbed it, ignoring the workmen as they bowed and doffed their caps. Did they know what damage they truly inflicted? Did they realize how irreparable were these walls once pulled down? More than stone and wood. Much more.

  I had done my best to salve Isabella’s heart, but this scene of destruction pulled at my own soul. I was glad she was not here to see it.

  The garden was unrecognizable. And though as a man I should never have been privy to the interior of the nun’s cloister, I had enjoyed a singular privilege that could not be explained in a court document or to a dispassionate inquisitor.

  It was lovely, her garden, a creature of Isabella’s own devising. A place of refuge and beauty. Of peace.

  And now it was rubble. The foliage was gray with dust as if some unholy snow storm had blown through. One beam had fallen across the garden, crushing her proud rose bushes beneath them. Red petals scattered like blood on a battlefield. Rosewood limbs lay broken and vanquished. I was saddened to see the roof come down, but I was far more affected by the sight of her slain roses.

  I knelt beside them, lifting a limp bloom in my palm. Their fragrance was still pungent in the air, still strong and full of the promise that only a rose can give. How much they had weathered, and now how little remained. It would certainly take a cataclysm such as this to destroy them utterly, for they never before surrendered. Proud, they were. Their faces always toward the sun.

  I let the bloom fall from my hand, its fragrance still permeating the flesh. Truly a death worth mourning.

  Still, a rose is a hearty thing. Pruned down to nothing, it surprises its gardener with the tenacity of its blooms. And a rose possesses that singular ability to be grafted to stronger stock, to push out it
s roots, hold on, and live again.

  AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

  Prior to 1540, there were some eight thousand men and women serving in England in over eight hundred religious communities. By 1540, none remained. Besides the evicted monks and nuns, it is believed that as much as ten times that population was also turned out of the dissolved monasteries and convents. These people were either servants dependent on religious houses to make a living, or they were older persons reliant on the monks and nuns for their retirement care.

  Once dissolved, the monastery buildings were sold, the churches were stripped of their riches, and in some cases burned, their empty shells still standing today as silent testimony to Henry VIII’s division with Rome.

  Ironically, the fall of the monasteries was also the fall of the chief instigator of their destruction, Thomas Cromwell. By this time, King Henry was married to his fourth wife Anne of Cleeves, forming an alliance with Lutheran Germany, but the reasons for the alliance were quickly slipping away. Not wishing any more enmity with the emperor (which Henry incurred by his fight to divorce Catherine of Aragon) and losing interest almost immediately in his new wife, the marriage was quickly dissolved—and so was confidence in Cromwell who machined the match. Cromwell was imprisoned and subsequently executed for treason.

  The character of Thomas Legh is well documented in the papers of the time. He was as detestable—if not more so—as depicted.

  As for Thomas Giffard, he did rebuild Blackladies and resided there until 1559, a year before he died, leasing it in that last year to his son Humphrey. He remained Catholic, as did many in the town of Brewood (pronounced “brood” by contemporary locals), and he is even mentioned in documents as one being fined for recusancy or “tarrying at home” instead of attending the king’s Protestant services. No doubt, he celebrated private masses in his own home.

  Despite this religious difference, he maintained unusual favor at court. He was appointed sheriff twice, and served as bailiff and custodian for a deer park in Bishop’s Wood. Once Queen Mary came to power, restoring Catholicism to England, Thomas was knighted at her coronation, and served as an honored member of Parliament during her unfortunate reign.

  His father lived to a ripe old age of 90 years, and Thomas himself died at 69, with seventeen children, ten surviving. In his will, he left to “Dame Alice” the amount of 40s and a black gown. Dame Alice apparently went on to live a comfortable life under the surviving Ursula Giffard. She was made godmother of George Giffard, one of Thomas’ grandchildren, and perhaps later lived under the care of Thomas’ daughter Isabel who married Francis Biddolph. They had a son named Humphrey, whom Alice named as executor of her will. Many of the items in her will look suspiciously like the inventory from Blackladies.

  Thomas was entombed in his family church in Brewood, the Church of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Chad. In a twist of cruel irony, the man who defended the Catholic faith with secret masses now finds himself buried not in a Catholic church, but in one now entrusted to the Church of England.

  Isabella Launder received 40s when they closed Blackladies. Her nuns each received 20s. They were all granted pensions for life. Isabella’s was 66s 8d a year, and the others received their yearly stipend of 33s 4d

  Isabella lived with her sister Agnes in Swynnerton until she died in March of 1551. It is not known how old she actually was. According to documents, only two nuns survived her: Cristabell Smith and Isabella’s niece, Alice Beche. Another niece married Christopher Alate, a former tenant at Blackladies, and was most likely a relation to Catherine Alate, one of the priory’s servants.

  Isabella was laid to rest in the parish of Stone not far from Beech on April 28, 1551.

  GLOSSARY

  ANGELUS A noon ringing of bells as a reminder of specific prayers to the Virgin Mary.

  BOLTING HOUSE A place for storing flour.

  DIVINE OFFICE They were first used for monastics, denoting the specific hours of the day for certain prayers. Also called the canonical hours, these soon became how the laity could divide the day, since the monks and nuns rang bells to call their community to prayer. It was a precursor to clocks, and the occupants of village and city alike, knew what specific time of the day it was by the ringing of the bells. They were divided roughly like this:

  Matins (during the night, usually midnight, sometimes called Vigils)

  Lauds (at dawn or 3:00 a.m.)

  Prime (first hour, 6:00 a.m.)

  Terce (third hour, 9:00 a.m.)

  Sext (sixth hour, noon)

  None (ninth hour, 3:00 p.m.)

  Vespers (6:00 p.m.)

  Compline (9:00 p.m.)

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  GYLING HOUSE Gyle is wort in the process of fermentation, so a gyling house is another place in the long process for the brewing of beer.

  KEELER A shallow tub for cooling liquids.

  KILHOUSE A place for drying grain. Also “Kilnhouse”.

  SKEP Woven beehive, where we get the shape of a beehive hair-do.

  STEWPOND A pond for keeping fish for eating.

  WAIN A horse-drawn wagon.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Los Angeles native and award-winning author Jeri Westerson writes the critically acclaimed Crispin Guest Medieval Noir mysteries and historical novels. Her mys- teries have garnered nominations for the Shamus, the Macavity, the Agatha, Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice, and the Bruce Alexander Historical Mystery Award. When not writing, Jeri dabbles in beekeeping, gourmet cooking, fine wines, cheap chocolate, and swoons over anything British. JeriWesterson.com