‘How can silence be background noise?’
Hen shrugs again, and they are silent. They look each other up and down, weighing each other: the young girl’s automatic reckoning of relative prettiness. Anne is shorter than Hen, and fair. Her curves show up Hen’s lean frame. She has the Challoner green eyes, set in a round and dimpled face. Pretty, thinks Hen. Prettier than me?
‘You’re fifteen,’ says Anne.
‘Yes. You?’
‘Sixteen. Ever been kissed?’
‘No.’
‘I have.’
‘Who?’
‘Have you read Romeo and Juliet?’ Anne sits down next to her at the window, pulling a cushion into a close hug. ‘He quoted it to me. “It is the East,” he said, “and my Anne is the sun.”’
‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’ Anne laughs. ‘I can’t tell you more. You might tell. You must earn the rest of the tale.’
‘How?’
‘Come.’ Anne stands up and walks towards the door. ‘Let’s go down. We’ve been waiting for you to eat, and I am starved.’
The girls walk down the stairs, towards the sound of Uncle Robert’s big laugh. Hen can smell roasting meat, and suddenly she realizes she is famished. They sit – Hen and her father, Anne and her parents – at a long table, and Hen lets the talk fade to a hum while she sets about the food. Her aunt sits at the top of the table, triumph and worry fighting over her stern features. The table is spread with dishes: fruit tarts, two whole roasted chickens, a side of beef, stewed carp, a bowl of purslane stalks, and a small dish of salted anchovies. Some buttered new potatoes sit nearest Hen, and a pile of spinach, black-flecked with nutmeg.
She begins to eat, a morsel of beef and a wing of chicken taking the edge off her hunger. Her fingers are sticky with the fat glaze from the skin, and she wipes them on her shoulder napkin, resisting the urge to lick them clean as she would at home. She hears a sharp intake of breath from her uncle and looks up. Her father has the triumphant look of one who has broken news of import.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘The parliament looks set to fail.’
Uncle Robert lets out a low whistle. ‘Yet how long has it been since the last one?’
‘Eleven years of personal rule,’ says her father.
‘Some would call it tyranny, brother.’
‘Aye, many do, and indeed have to his face in Parliament. Still, he must hear it. He’s desperate for money, they say.’
‘Despite the ship money, and the sundry other taxes he’s ripped out of us honest merchants?’
‘We’ve not done all badly. Those inside the monopolies have reason to love the king. But the Scots are proving hard to put down, and costly.’
Uncle Robert nods. ‘Those bastard Scots, eh? And the Earl of Strafford so determined to punish them. Have you met him, brother?’
‘No, and I thank the Lord for it. I have seen him, many a time. His eyes fell on me once, and I thought to cross myself like a papist. He gives the godly ammunition with his very face – it looks like the face Satan borrows to wear for parties.’
They all laugh, except for Aunt Martha.
‘Why should Satan borrow a man’s face?’ she asks plaintively.
Uncle Robert leans forward, waving a chicken leg with excitement. ‘To the nub, brother, why is Parliament to fail?’
‘You know of John Pym, the MP? He is man of affairs to the Earls of Warwick and Bedford. A connected man, and the Lord bless his courage. He stood there in the chamber and denounced the king’s personal rule. It was a clever, measured speech. I brought my copy for you to read. Did not blame the king. Demanded that a number of committees be set up to investigate the abuses of power in the years of tyranny. Pym said the illegal prerogative taxes were as large a threat to our property as popish innovations are to our church.’
Uncle Robert bangs his wine cup on the table, flushed with pleasure. ‘Hear him! Hear him!’
Richard Challoner smiles at his brother, clearly relishing the role of storyteller. ‘They say the king is steaming with fury, but needs the money so must sit still yet. It’s a race to see which wins: the king’s hunger for cash, or his fury at little Pym squeaking his demands. The king wants Parliament to vote him the money first, and complain second. The MPs want redress, then they will supply the gilt.’
‘Father,’ says Anne. They all turn to look at her. She looks so pretty in the candlelight, thinks Hen.
‘Is King Charles very wicked, then?’
Uncle Robert’s horrified face strikes Hen as extraordinarily funny. She swallows a laugh.
‘Wicked? No, no, child.’
‘But you’re always complaining about taxes, and saying he should call a parliament, and calling his wife a papist whore.’
‘Anne!’ says her mother sharply. She turns to her husband. ‘But she has a point, husband. Tell us what you think of papist whores.’
Something sour settles on the table. Aunt Challoner manages to look both triumphant and sad all at once. Her faded face too deliberately avoids her husband’s gaze. For a brief moment, the only sound is the scraping of knives on plates, and the slow, deliberate thumping of a dog’s tail on the floor. A spaniel, it lies with its chin resting on its paws, throwing sad looks at the humans who are so provocatively eating in front of him. Mournful eyes track the grease from the chicken skin sliding down Uncle Robert’s chin. The dog lets out a plaintive whine, devoid even of hope.
Richard Challoner speaks up, his voice sounding loud in the awkward hush.
‘You see, Anne, the king cannot be wicked. He is just badly advised. The Earl of Strafford, for example, is a right hard-horse bully. And yes, the queen is a papist. If he can be brought to listen to the good, honest voice of Parliament, not the strident nonsense of those who whisper poison in his ear, then all will be well.’
Uncle Robert nods with vigour, attracting a new and now malevolent stare from Aunt Martha.
‘But,’ says Hen, aware of her impertinence at crossing her father, ‘are we not just excusing him? If you, Father, ran your business down, it would be easy to blame your advisors, to spare your feelings. But it would be a lie. A kindly lie, perhaps. You are in charge, and your advisors are not.’
‘The child has a point, Richard,’ says her uncle, smiling at her.
‘Aye, she does,’ says her father. ‘She’s a clever puss, this one.’
Hen looks sideways at Anne, but her cousin is looking towards her mother, a half-smile playing on her lips.
Richard Challoner continues to speak, his hand twisting the stem of his wine glass round and round. Hen looks at her mother’s wedding ring, which he wears on his little finger. It catches the light of the candles, glinting at her.
‘Parliament cannot blame the king directly; it would be unthinkable,’ he says. ‘So perhaps they say Strafford when they mean “Your Majesty”, and Laud when they mean “our Sovereign Lord”.’
‘Oh, very good! Laud, Lord,’ says Uncle Robert, laughing. He looks towards his wife, inviting her to smile with him. But she frowns back, and the smile dies on his face.
Anne says quickly, ‘And, Uncle, have you seen the king?’
‘I have, child. Hen has too.’
Hen nods solemnly.
‘And what does he look like?’
‘Like a man too small for his own sense of self,’ says Challoner.
‘Yes,’ Hen says. ‘But also, he makes you want to hug him tightly, and tell him it will all be all right. Even though you know he will curse you for it. That’s how he looked to me.’
‘God keep you from hugging princes, clever puss,’ says her father, laughing.
Later, lying in bed in the darkness, Hen hears Anne whisper: ‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘Clever puss.’
‘I can’t help what my father calls me. What was gnawing at your parents?’
‘Mother caught him tupping the maid. Papist. I heard her screaming from the bottom of the garden.’
‘Maid or mother?’
‘Clever puss my arse. Turnip head.’
‘Stop it!’ Hen raises her voice, furious now. ‘I’m your guest here, you witch.’ She is shaking with the injustice of it. Taken from her books and her home, to be patronized by this short-arsed cow.
‘Bitch!’ Anne whispers back.
Hen thinks of the boys she’s seen fighting on the street, when out roaming with Sam a few weeks before. ‘Wind fucker!’ she hisses at Anne. ‘Cum-twang!’
Anne is silent. Hen hears her sitting up in bed, the old frame creaking. ‘Wind fucker?’ Anne repeats back. ‘Cum-twang? What on earth are you talking about? What is a cum-twang?’
Hen sees her cousin’s shoulders shake in the gloomy light. Laugh with her, or hit her?
‘I don’t know,’ she says simply.
Suddenly, they are both laughing.
‘Cum-twang!’ says Anne again. ‘Where, in all that is holy, did you hear that?’
‘If I tell, you must swear, on all that is dear to you, that you will keep my secret.’
‘I swear.’
So Hen tells her about becoming Cesario, about the joy of pulling on her brother’s breeches and sauntering through London. Of seeing the street boys fighting and hollering, of eavesdropping on the watermen, and vaulting walls. Of sitting on a low wall behind an alehouse in Southwark, reeling from its triple strength brew. Of the thrill of nearly being caught when old Mr Birch, slipping furtively out of a Southwark stew, saw her and paused, confused. Of sitting with Sam on the bridge as the sun set over a seething city, dappling the Thames with its blood-red light.
There is a pause when her tale finishes. The moon shines into the room and she can see her cousin’s outline, the profile of her face and her knees pulled up under the blankets.
‘I won’t tell,’ says Anne solemnly. ‘I promise. My brother and his friends when they swear it, they clasp hands like this.’ She reaches out, palm outstretched, and they clasp hands, thumbs entwined. ‘Now,’ Anne says, ‘I swear it on the blood of my mother, on the heads of my brothers.’
Hen smiles and squeezes her cousin’s hand.
CHAPTER FOUR
EDWARD CHALLONER WISHES HE HAD NOT BROUGHT HIS friend to meet the family. The coach rumbles towards his uncle’s house, and already he regrets his diffident suggestion to Will that they might escape their college for a few days. He sits backwards to the direction of travel, watching his father and Will on the opposite seat talk too companionably, too easily.
His father’s coarseness, his joviality, the way his belly trembles when he laughs at his own jokes – all are too much to be borne. Ned feels the embarrassment so acutely it manifests itself as a physical squirming, a twisting away from the joke, from the innuendo, from whatever jollity his father has dreamt of now.
Will, the dear fellow, appears not to be showing the distaste he must feel. He is all affability. Yet what must he think? The ripeness of the atmosphere, compared to the austerity of their college life, is too much. Even the shock of switching from Latin to English, with all its possibilities for vulgarity, all its twists and imprecisions, is grating on Ned. Surely it must irritate Will?
He runs a hand across his pumiced face, feeling for the tender spots where the stone decapitated his pimples. Fewer now than last year, perhaps. The travelling covers are down against the late spring rain, and it is unbearably hot in the carriage. He feels the sweat prickling down his back, an itchiness across his whole body. He has visited the house before, and knows the spot where he will swim in the river later, and he thinks on it with joy. Is it sinful, to anticipate pleasure with such relish?
The rain draws off, and the coachman opens the covers, letting in a delicious lick of cold air as they trundle on. They pull up, at last, and the sound of their approach has brought assorted dogs and children yapping into the driveway. He sees his aunt holding herself stiffly on the steps, and his uncle planting his feet in a wide proprietorial stance. And here is Henrietta, rounding the house, arm in arm with Cousin Anne. There are flowers in their hair, and grass stains on their dresses, and their laughter carries above even the crunch of the wheels on the gravel. Ned knows he should disapprove of their disarray, of their clear frivolity, but he finds an unexpected smile on his face as they run towards the carriage, whooping like children.
Uncle Robert’s booming cry greets them as they step down from the coach: ‘What news, what news?’
‘Parliament is dissolved, Uncle,’ says Ned, after the introductions. ‘And the apprentices rose. Attacked Laud’s palace. All the university talks of little else.’
This is news to be dissected. It comes like an arrow into the isolated house. News to be pored over and pondered. Only Anne seems indifferent, rolling her eyes impatiently as the evening’s conversation twists and turns back to the same feverish speculation. What will the king do next? What will the godly peers do? What of John Pym and John Hampden? Will there be more riots? Will we be safe?
At last, Anne and Hen go to bed, leaving the men in their philosophical mood with a brandy bottle near drunk and the fire down to embers. What use a king? Where is God in all this maelstrom? Where does duty lie?
Hen would have stayed to listen, but she sees Anne twitching with impatience. She can sense her cousin’s boredom burning brighter and fiercer, until at last it is no longer impolite to leave, and they flee upstairs. It is cold for May, and they undress quickly, race through their prayers, and leap into bed, Anne mock screaming into her pillow, making Hen laugh.
‘Who cares? Ship money this and prerogative that – who cares, Hen? Why do they go on and on? Why, why?’
‘It’s different here. You can’t see why it matters, because here it probably doesn’t. The king’s anger won’t make your river stop running or your grass any greener. But at home it matters. What the king does infects everything. There are riots and fights and fires to worry about. And Father’s business. You heard Ned – the apprentices have been on the riot in Lambeth.’
‘It comes out now,’ Anne says. ‘We’re provincials, and we don’t understand.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
In the three weeks she has been in Oxford, their friendship has grown – close and fierce. But this tone is something new; something unwelcome.
‘Then how did you mean it?’ asks Anne, pugnacious as a street-boy.
‘Do you not care about the king, about his dealings with MPs?’
‘Why should I?’ Anne’s voice is hostile, the words tumbling out. ‘What are they to me? News, my father calls it, and falls on it like a dog on carrion. Rooting about in the entrails. Pulling travellers into conversation. “What news, what news?” he shouts. Yet when Mother and I talk of our neighbours, he scolds us for being gossips. What else is news of the court and Westminster but gossip about people you don’t even know?’
‘But yet,’ says Hen, meeting Anne’s hostility with control, ‘to be connected to the wider world. Even if, out here, you cannot see the direct consequences of the doings of the great men, does that matter? D’you think that when King Henry fought for the true church, or the witch Mary sought to destroy it, there were women out here who shrugged? Thought, Pshaw, not for me? Did they do the same when the Normans came, or the Romans left? The news, it’s just…’ She looks around, as if for inspiration. ‘Just history as it’s being forged.’
‘But time filters what’s important. All this talk, all that passes as news, is all so much noise.’ Anne sticks her fingers in her ears and mouths nonsense. Hen hits her with a pillow. Yet under the mock fight there runs the shock of disagreement.
The next morning, when Hen wakes, Anne is already gone. She heads downstairs and finds her father, incongruously still in the bustling kitchen. She kisses the top of his head, and he reaches round, pulling her onto his lap.
‘Are you still little enough to give your old man a cuddle, little puss?’ She laughs, and pretends to struggle against his arms.
Suddenly Will Johnson w
alks in, yawning. She hadn’t spoken to him much the night before. He had been passionate when talking, mainly with her father, his arms waving wildly to illustrate his points. Sometimes, turning quickly, she had seen him looking at her, before hastily glancing away on being discovered. He probably thought her a fool. Looking at her, thinking how could she be related to the pretty, vivacious one. Seeing him now, she pushes her father’s arms down in earnest and stands up quickly.
‘Good morning,’ she says.
He looks startled to see her, and runs a hand through his heavy, dark hair.
‘Will, my boy,’ says her father, levering himself out of the chair.
‘Good morning, sir. Miss Challoner.’
‘Did you see anything after I left?’
‘No, sir. The cloud remained. It must have rained in the night, as it’s clear enough now.’ Will pours out some of the small beer on the table at her father’s wordless invitation, and drinks deep. He sets the mug down and clears the sleep out of his eyes.
‘Are you planning to stay tonight, Will?’ Her father’s tone is one reserved for those few he really likes. Normally it would take a longer acquaintance for its honey colours to soften her father’s usual abruptness.
‘I am, if your brother has no objections.’
‘None, I am sure.’ He looks towards the open door, out towards where the cook is throwing seed at jostling hens. ‘You are in the right about the weather, Will. It looks set fair.’ He rises to his feet, and Hen can tell that one of her father’s enthusiasms has settled on him.
‘A picnic!’ he shouts. ‘We shall have a picnic.’
Hours later – hours spent by her father in the study, a book open on his lap and dribble leaking from his sleep-slack mouth; by the cook in a frenzy of chopping, packing and muttering; and by Aunt Martha in convulsive, whispered rages to her husband – they set off to follow the river upstream. The little ones are first, abuzz with excitement, then a cluster of adults, Richard Challoner and his brother at its centre, talking loudly of some merchant’s disgrace on the Exchange. Last come Hen and Anne, wordlessly reconciled, arm in arm. Their suspension of hostilities is unspoken, but manifest in the way they walk even closer, their arms entwined tighter than usual.
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