‘Your turn,’ she says to Sam, knowing that he will have to do it, now that she has. He does it quickly, pausing in the chair just long enough to wave his hand and draw Hen into a deep, giggling curtsy.
They amble on through the great empty palace, the royal apartments, the bowling alleys and tennis courts, and the staterooms. Layers of royal history piled up brick by brick in this higgledy-piggledy palace. In the tiltyard, a stake is pushed into the ground where once the bears would have been tethered. Hen wonders what happened to the bears. Surely they have not gone to Oxford too, like the rest of the court?
How peculiar it is, to be sauntering around the palace as if they owned it. Word has rippled throughout the city that the empty buildings are not guarded, that anyone may walk in royalty’s footsteps in these strange times.
They are not alone in their amblings. It feels as if half of London is using the break in the incessant rain to visit the palace, empty and forlorn as it is. A skeleton staff gives in to the tide of gawpers, collecting the valuables and the king’s collection of paintings in a few, guardable, lockable rooms. The palace resounds with the court’s absence. There are no gallants by the King’s Gate, no guards. No ladies in wide skirts sweeping along the endless corridors. No gentlemen sauntering with tennis rackets. No musicians hurrying to the Banqueting House. No servants, either, to sweep the floors. Instead, idlers trip through the palace, open-mouthed at the splendour. Even without its tapestries and paintings, the palace awes them. The ceilings are arched and carved, the fireplaces huge and ornate. Look down, though, and the floor is a riot of muddy footprints, the rush matting peeling at the edges to let in the draughts.
In one particularly ornate room, Sam and Hen find a small crowd gathering in front of a mural. There is King Henry, his legs wide and his eyes burning. He looks as if he could stride down from the walls to berate them. ‘What are you doing here in my palace, you vermin, you dung beetles?’
There is no laughter in this room, just a hush and a fear-edged wonder. We sent our king away. We sent him away! What have we done?
On their way down to the kitchens, Hen and Sam are passed by a ragtag couple carrying great sacks of coal, raided from the scuttles down there. The woman, pinched and grey, stares defiantly at Hen as she passes her. Hen looks away as she steps aside to let the woman pass. It will be a hard enough winter for London’s poor with the king holding the great coal towns, and the price of warmth creeping ever upwards. It is icy cold in the kitchens. The great hearths lie cold and black, and the twins’ breath hovers in visible clouds as they exhale. The pantry and butter-room are bare. The stark kitchens sadden her.
They move on to the great Banqueting House, built by the king’s late father, the first of the Stuarts. They have passed the outside often enough. The startling modernity of its great stone façade contrasts with the ubiquitous red brick; its size, grandeur and glorious classical lines still shock. Londoners mime insouciance in front of it; out-of-towners crick their necks and stare. Once inside, their feet slap loudly on the floor; echoes bounce off the walls. The tapestries are gone and the walls are bare. Above them, though, is Rubens’ great ceiling, depicting the glories of James I.
Hen and Sam stare upwards and then join their fellow Londoners who are lying on the floor to get a better view. Above them, kings and gods tumble and pose, their limbs alive with movement, the light playing on their faces, their robes flowing in folds that capture the shadows.
‘Ned wouldn’t like this,’ says Sam, his eyes fixed on an angel’s plump breasts.
‘Lord, no,’ says Hen. ‘Let’s hope the king took his ladders to Oxford, or the godly will be up there painting some modesty on.’
‘Hmm,’ says her brother, distracted.
A voice from by her head says: ‘Aye, miss, it would be a travesty.’
She swivels to see a small, lined man lying near her, looking upwards with a face of near rapture.
‘Ain’t it glorious?’ he says, still looking up. He points at one of the oval panels. ‘Look there. Abundance suppressing Avarice, I believe.’ A haloed golden figure pins a miserable creature to the floor.
‘And there,’ he points again. ‘Wise Government holding a bridle above Intemperate Discord.’ Wise Government is a bored-looking woman, and Intemperate Discord a naked, cowed man.
Hen finds herself strangely affected by the painting. She looks at the indifference in the woman’s face, and the abject humiliation of the defeated. She doesn’t see the allegory she is supposed to see at all; instead she sees ‘Impartial Death vanquishes Brother’. She imagines Ned, out there with the army somewhere, being defeated, so cold and naked and alone.
She reaches for Sam’s hand. ‘Let’s go,’ she says. ‘Please.’ They leave the little man lying there still, tracing the lines of genius on the ceiling.
They wander on through the maze of apartments and find themselves in the privy gardens. The bare trees lining the walkways give the garden a tragic, unkempt air. Unswept leaves have turned to sludge, making the paths slippery. Carved wooden creatures peep slyly from behind hedges, silently watching the twins as they walk.
‘Hard to imagine it in springtime,’ says Hen, picking an obstinate russet leaf from a tree and twirling it round in her fingers.
‘I’m not sure how long I can last, Hen,’ says Sam suddenly.
She adjusts to the sudden swerve in conversation. ‘You cannot go for a soldier, too. Father would break.’ And I, she adds, silently.
‘So I must sit and learn to keep ledgers, and understand linen, and try to keep myself from stabbing my eyes out with a pen? When he was my age he ran away to the wars.’
They come to a sundial standing at the centre of the garden. It sits obsolete under the low grey sky.
‘True. But not to fight Englishmen. Do you even know which side to fight for?’
‘Ned’s. Parliament’s.’
‘Why? Sam, you are not godly. I do not believe you care in the slightest about the king’s divine rights, nor Parliament’s prerogatives. Without conviction for one side or the other, what need is there to fight?’
‘There is honour. Or rather the dishonour of standing by. Of wandering in pretty gardens with my sister, when good men are fighting and dying.’
‘Honour. Your sex’s trump card,’ she says, turning from him impatiently. ‘What a thing to die for.’
‘There is nothing else worth dying for, Hen, if you think on it. Why should I die to protest the Book of Common Prayer?’ He picks up a stick lying on the ground and fences with an imaginary foe.
‘Take back your damned altar rail, sir, or I shall spike you!’ he cries, lunging. He turns to her and pretends to stab himself. ‘Or perhaps you would have me die to rid the world of ship money, or tonnage and poundage?’ He falls to the floor and lies thrashing on the cold stone. He cocks one eye open.
‘Would you have me lay down my life for the sake of taxation, Hen?’ He spits with theatrical disgust and mutters again: ‘Taxation!’
She finds her reluctant smile spreading into a laugh. ‘Beware bedlam, fool,’ she says, and taps him with her foot.
He groans, and rolls over onto his front. ‘Kicked,’ he says, ‘by my own blood.’
Once home, there is good news: a letter from Anne. But it was borne by a grumbling Nurse, back to resume her tenuous position in the household. As much as she’d hoped to be harassed by over-gallant Cavaliers or rude apprentices on the way home, the road between Oxford and London proved resolutely dull. Cheated of her chance of being heroic or put upon, Nurse hands over the letter with a growl.
‘Trouble, that girl. Mind my words, Henrietta. Trouble.’
She shuffles off, grumbling still, to embellish what little danger there was in her telling to Cook and Milly. Milly sits wide-eyed as Nurse tells of soldiers and potholed roads, of moments of terror and her own heroic stoicism. Cook, less gullible yet diplomatic, makes the required noises as Nurse whines her way back towards equanimity.
Upstairs, Hen an
d Sam sprawl by the fire as she reads the letter aloud.
Dearest Hen,
We are, like Their Majesties, in Oxford! Father decided that the house, being outside the city walls, was too exposed to passing ruffians, too isolated. So we are crammed, all of us, into three rooms on top of his counting house, in the city itself. He has managed to find a pass for your nurse. You are welcome to her, odious witch, though Mother much laments her going.
There is no room for her here. Mother is flapping and furious about managing us all in such a small space, with but one servant girl who sleeps on the floor of my room, which I also share with my littlest sister. She snores, and is freckled – the maid, I mean.
Father is never here. He says that having the court in Oxford is supplying him with endless business, but I heard them arguing last night about how the grandest folk are least likely to pay in cash. We have already turned over our plate to the king, and must hide any jewels. Those wearing anything fine on the streets are harangued as traitors for not passing their goods to the king’s cause. The king, they say, is light of purse and is trying to prize funds from London using underhand channels. To little purpose, evidently.
Father is forced, too, to spend one day a week out building defences against the rebels. The king decreed it. He did not think that what passes for able-bodied in Oxford may not serve – it is a sight to see the stumbling, crooked old fellows prized from the libraries and set to the earth with shovels!
They are arguing much here. I cannot decide if it is because I hear them more in the smaller space or if it is due to the mere fact of more shouting. The littleys are miserable all cooped up in these little rooms. The baby screams and screams. The older ones are just cross, Hen. Now is the time they would be building towers of dead leaves and jumping into piles of them. Here, they just sit indoors and fight, for Mother is loathe to let them out with all the soldiers and the horses marching up and down the street. Christmas is approaching, and how we will make it happy for them, I cannot tell.
The house next door was lived in by a godly family, who have upped and left for Abingdon with the rest of their kind since the king arrived. Their rooms are now full to overflowing with soldiers: mostly rude fellows, but polite enough to me as I walk past them. I ignore the ones who call out, and step higher. Our area is overrun with Wicked Ladies, now, attracted by the court and the weight of soldiers quartered here. The other night, Prince Rupert led a torch-lit dance down the street outside my window, followed by a troop of women wearing hoods! I didn’t, at first, understand, but Mathew told me.
Mathew has joined to fight for the king. Father would have rather he fought for Parliament, if anyone, and Mathew, I think, did not mind much either, but did not want to be left out. But we all talked it out, and it seemed best to join the king, with the court quartered here and Father’s business supplied from royalist pockets. And Mathew was pleased, I think. The Roundheads are most frightfully severe, and godly, yet not above appalling barbarity. Everyone here talks about their nastiness in battle, particularly in the late sack of Winchester. To desecrate a cathedral!
Mathew has taken to his new life, and roisters in the taverns enthusiastically with his fellow new recruits, much to Father’s fury. He talks often about his pretty cuz, Hen, and I’m sure sends you a kiss.
He will not be happy, he says, until he has a rebel’s guts on his sword. (Not poor cousin Ned, I hope.)
The only really happy one, Hen, is me. Oh, how I wish you were here. The excitement! The fun! Did we ever go into Oxford together? Before the court came, it was all serious young men, jabbering in Latin and locked in their colleges come nightfall. But now! The streets throng with gallant soldiers, wearing the sashes of their regiments. The ladies of the court gather in New College’s grove, and I go too with my friends, and we wander through the trees as the lutes play and all the men bow to the prettiest of us. I have seen the king, and the queen! And now when I see you, we shall be able to nod wisely about them together, and I shall not have to envy you your sight of them. (Though, Hen, you are in the right of it. How short!!)
They have turned Christ Church quad into a giant slaughterhouse, and as we walked past this morning, a pig squealed so loudly that I jumped. A passing officer, with the bluest, bluest eyes, smiled at me. Then he bowed so low that I thought he would trip!
The weather has been delightful too, icy but bright. There is another early winter sunset, now, and I look out of my little window to see a group of officers walk past, their faces all golden in the low sun, their swords glinting. How I love it here – it’s making me quite the poet!
The only boring thing is the constant talk of the current troubles. All the talk now is of new peace talks. How they all drone on, though! I keep silent, and in my head bless the wars for bringing all this excitement to my life, and the court to Oxford. I wish you were here to share it. But as you are not, I can do little more than send my heartiest love.
Your Anne
Sam stands, pacing the room. ‘So I am the only one of the younger Challoners not to go for a soldier,’ he says.
‘She says there’s hope of fresh peace talks. Look, here.’ She points to the page. ‘Waller told Father that there is agitation in both houses for fresh talks, and it is only a few weeks since the streets were alive with rioters against the war. This cannot last.’
He stands by the window, looking out.
‘Sam, wait until the spring at least. They say it might be all over by then. If it is not, then, perhaps, you should go.’
‘The spring,’ he says. ‘If I wait until then, you promise to let me go with no guilt hanging on me, no reproaches?’
‘I promise,’ she says.
Hen lifts her head from her book. She sits curled on some cushions in the window seat of her father’s library. Outside, the gardener is at work on their small town garden, clipping leaves and whistling softly. It is quieter this side of the house. The high wall round their garden puts a barrier between their private realm and the street.
The slushy rain falls relentlessly. Hen sees her father suddenly through the smeared glass. She smiles at the sight of him, and watches as he stands under a tree, accosting the gardener, waving a book. Old Benny is leaning on a stick. His gout must be flaring. She sees his shoulders sag as his master’s lecture rolls over him. She can’t see the old man’s face, but she pictures the wrinkles in it furrowing deeper, the rain dripping off his wide-brimmed hat.
Her hair is loose around her shoulders, her stomacher undone to the waist so she can breathe. Her shoes are on the floor, and her cuffs and collar are upstairs, sitting stiffly on her dresser. There are some comforts in having no mother and a distracted father.
The door opens sharply, and she sits upright, guiltily pushing her book under the cushion. Her father enters, shuffling slowly. His face is pink from the freezing air and his remaining strands of hair are damp.
She breathes out, relieved. ‘Oh, only you.’
‘Only me? Pudding cat!’
‘Sorry, Father. I meant, I thought you were Nurse.’
‘Thank your stars I am not. Look at the state of you, turtle.’
She scowls, and he laughs.
‘No matter, child. You’ll do, I daresay.’
‘What’s your book, Father, the one you were waving at poor old Benny?’
‘Parkinson. Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris.’
‘And did you convince him that paradise is held in its pages?’
‘My dear, I did not. Natural philosophy he sneers at. Parkinson’s brilliance he laughs at. All wisdom that is new he baulks at. His grandfather planted sorrel in such and such a way, as did his father before him, and to break the chain would bring the God of the Garden down to rain thunderbolts on his marrows. Beelzebub himself will crouch in the rose hips, and a new Sodom unleashed on Fetter Lane.’
She laughs, and he sits down next to her on the window seat. He winces as he sits. They both look out to where the old gardener is bent low over the rather
pathetic winter shrubs.
‘Father, I do not, for one second, believe that Benny blasphemed.’
‘Perhaps not, but he wanted to. “God rot you master and your books,” he wanted to say, but stood there mute instead. Waiting for me to quit his sacred domain. And so I shambled off, quite contrite. Master turned penitent, and Benny reigning supreme. Ha ha!’
His laughter and the rain-stung glow of his cheeks make him look healthier, younger. His wide green eyes crease into slits, and his great belly shakes in a contagious chuckle, impossible to resist. It rolls down the corridors and spills out into the garden, and even old Benny smiles in response, despite himself.
‘The old problem, Father?’ she says, pointing at his bandaged foot.
‘It is. A bad flare-up, kitten. It will keep me housebound to terrorize the servants for a few days.’ He lifts his swollen foot onto the chair opposite, grunting a little.
‘Well, then. What’s the book you’re hiding, my ninny-headed miss? One of those dreadful romances? That oaf Tancred and his absurd mistress?’
‘No, Father. Am I a fool?’ She pulls the book out from under the cushion and holds it out to him.
He reads the cover aloud. ‘The Man on the Moon?’
‘I put it on your account.’
‘Did you, Miss Mischief?’ His green eyes, so like her own yet cobwebbed with age, twinkle at her. ‘And did you find your other worlds?’
‘It is not quite as I expected. It’s more of a satire. It imagines another world, on the moon – a perfect world. And by its perfection it shows us the imperfections in ours.’
‘Ah. A utopia. Beware of those, pudding. In my experience, they don’t exist. One man’s utopia is another’s gaol.’
‘Such a cynic! Surely we should look to perfect our world.’
‘Impossible, my kitten. And always will be, as long as there is sickness and death. Your politicians and bishops and noble lords can’t help that. No praying nor speechifying can raise the dead, nor make the bad man good.’
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