‘My son Richard.’
‘I am pleased to meet you, Richard,’ I said.
The boy bowed. ‘Thank you, Mistress Elizabeth,’ he said in a very grown-up, self-assured manner. Quick-eyed, he looked over my shoulder to where my brother’s children were laughing over a game they were engaged with in the alcove that fronted my father’s closet.
My eyes followed him. ‘Join them. They are planning games and I think one might be a play. They will welcome another conspirator.’
Thomas affectionately threw an arm over his nephew’s shoulders. ‘Come, Richard. I shall introduce you to them.’
Moments later, the children were all laughing together.
‘Do you have daughters too, Cat?’ I queried.
‘None living, not yet,’ she said, but I caught a sigh in her voice. Her sad tone suggested that illness had stolen away at least one daughter.
‘I am sorry,’ I said and glanced across the hall. ‘Who is that speaking to Thomas?’
‘Morgan’s brother, John. He is steward to Lord Scales. We are honoured today that he has come to Thomas’ betrothal.’
‘Are your sister and Master Wellifield coming?’
‘There she is. Eliza has come.’ Cat pointed through the groups of guests to the door. ‘Wearing the green cloak, speaking with that thin man with the tall blue hat.’
In the doorway stood a pretty woman in her late twenties, just a little older than Thomas. ‘Is the man in the tall hat her husband?’ I asked Cat. Eliza’s husband was a busy sheep farmer, red-faced and rotund. As soon as I had said it, I knew he could not be the man wearing the blue hat and I wondered where he could be.
‘No,’ Cat said. ‘He has not come.’
Eliza hurried towards us as if blown in by a storm. ‘My goodness, Cat, people simply will not move out of the way. Their rudeness astounds me,’ she said with a hint of discontent in her tone.
‘It is Christmas after all,’ Cat said quietly. ‘Folks are celebrating today. They are happy that our brother is to be wed to one of our own community.’
Eliza Wellifield’s green eyes ran up and down my person as if she was sizing up the value of my new burgundy gown. A moment later she said to Cat, ‘Remind me of her name, sister.’
‘Elizabeth, of course, sister, as you well know.’
She turned to me, her face supercilious. ‘Well, Mistress Elizabeth, as well ‘tis that I prefer to be called Eliza as we own the same name. Such an over-used name - Elizabeth - after the old queen. Wellifield could not come. You see, my husband is busy with his sheep and I am soon to have a child.’ This was spoken dramatically as if the child’s birth was imminent, which it clearly was not. ‘Our father is dying so we shall not stay long.’
‘I understand,’ I said, trying to remain unruffled by her impatient, fussy manner.
Servants bustled about setting out platters on two long trestle tables ready for the dinner that was to follow. Eliza said not another word to me, only to excuse herself to join other women whom she knew. Cat apologised for her, saying that Wellifield treated her badly and she was resentful. I shook my head and said, ‘I hope that she resolves what is making her unhappy.’
‘She is lonely. Eliza longs for children, so perhaps the baby will make her content.’
We sipped our frothy drink and Cat told me about a beautiful Christmas lantern Morgan had purchased for her. We talked of small things until the boy bishop struck his staff on the floor rushes and the priest announced that it was time for Thomas and I to receive his blessing. My father led me forward to where Thomas was already waiting proudly in the centre of the room. Our family clerk handed us a document that confirmed properties we would own jointly once we were married. Father Christopher read it aloud. We would keep possession of the orchard granted to my first husband as my dowry. Further to this, my father granted us land in Chiswick and in Battersea. Once we were married, Thomas must confirm that I would take possession of a generous dower portion. My business was to be safeguarded by my husband during my lifetime.
The priest witnessed our signatures and blessed us both. Thomas’ brother-in-law added his signature. My father signed and my brother, Harry, placed his signature below ours. Thomas slipped a betrothal ring, a gold band with a sapphire, onto my middle right finger. Father secreted the document in a sycamore-wood coffer he kept for family documents and sent it with his clerk for safe keeping in his closet.
Clapping his hands he said, ‘Meat and ale on the table. Come, all of you, and fill up the benches.’
After Father spoke, Thomas kissed me on my mouth, and I felt the lingering sensation of that kiss all through St Stephen’s feast.
‘If this is the betrothal,’ he said, ‘the wedding will be sumptuous.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I want it to be quiet.’
‘I agree to that, sweetheart,’ he said and led me to our places at the table.
Later that evening, having eaten our fill of the Christmas pie, beef, mutton, and pork accompanied by sauces both savoury and fruit, spiced vegetable dishes, cheeses, fruit tarts and marzipan cakes, we chose young Richard as our lord of misrule and played games. We joined the children in blind man’s buff, taking up their infectious laughter. We would not go to sleep until well past midnight.
‘If this is our future,’ Thomas whispered in my ear as he caught me in the game for a fourth time. ‘I shall never want for another.’
‘I hope not, Thomas,’ I said, but I thought that as I said it, I saw a shadow cross his face. ‘You are sure,’ I said.
‘I am as sure of my love for you as much as I can be sure of anything.’
Years later, I remembered these words.
That night in bed, after Joan’s excited chatter had trailed into gentle snores, I lay awake. With Thomas Cromwell by my side, I need never fear danger again. For a moment, I recollected my first Tom and felt a creeping cold possess my limbs. I vowed to myself that I would now have the future I had never truly owned before. This time, nothing must disturb my heart’s peace. No cruel gossip would touch our lives.
My mind turned to Edward Northleach. How fortunate I was that I had found love and not a charlatan. Yet, an anxious thought niggled. The merchant had not returned to England. He could not have, because if Father had already received his due from him, he surely would have mentioned it. In fact, I puzzled the fact that Father never referred to Northleach, but since I wanted nothing more to do with the middleman, I did not ask after him. Master Northleach would hear from others of my betrothal. He would forget me.
I thought happy thoughts until I finally drifted off into a contented sleep, listening to my sister snoring softly by my side.
Chapter Sixteen
Midsummer 1526, The Kitchen
THE EGG FOR THE midsummer tart slides out of my hand to break onto the floor tiles where yellow yolk pools into a viscous mess. A bevy of cook’s boys rush to clean up this gluey puddle. The cooks look askance at me, and I realise they would rather Meg and I left the kitchen to them. Meg, is visiting us because she lives on Cornhill now. See how she is stirring up a bowl of preserved spiced fruit in the corner by the window. She glares at the cooks, who look away and attend to basting the leg of lamb the spit boy is turning.
Meg turns to me and remarks, ‘An egg is smashed, Mistress Elizabeth. Mind you, we can’t make a tart without breaking a few eggs. There will be some good out of it.’
I cannot think what she means. She is always repeating obscure sayings. She likes the sound of them rolling off her tongue.
‘The only good I want today is pastry for the Midsummer tart,’ I reply firmly, as I crack another egg, then another, and they plop neatly into the bowl to join with a half-dozen other egg yolks.
The Midsummer tart is not my recipe but my mother’s, one that she inherited from her mother. Pastry cooks call it a Florentine. Its filling will be a thick plum and spiced fruit marmalade, and to finish, I shall lace it with bands of pastry and sugar comfits. The pastry is easy, since it is simply
made from egg yolks, flour and cream, yet its crust will be so delicate that once cooked we could serve it up to Queen Catherine herself.
Instead, we have another visitor for dinner - Henry Vaughan, who is Thomas’ agent in the Netherlands, a young man whom my husband wishes to thank for the wonderful globe he has sent to us, a ball painted with outlines of the countries of this world, its oceans and with peculiar creatures frolicking within them, a marvellous gift which fascinates our son and daughters. When I was a child the world was flat, so it was said in some circles, with Heaven above the skies and Hell beneath the earth. Now that it appears round, where is Heaven? What else will change?
The cooks are preparing a special dinner for our St John’s Eve and Henry Vaughan, a great favourite with all our family, will stay to walk with us through the streets and watch the Midsummer pageants. I smile with pleasure at this thought as I carefully roll out pastry and wipe my hands on my apron. I ease my great sheet of pastry into the gigantic tart plate, a difficult thing to do which requires much patience. Once it is safely delivered to the plate, I stand back, pleased with my work. Now, the tart is almost ready to be filled with the marmalade, to receive its sculptured pastry decoration and be sprinkled with sugar before the cook bakes it.
The first time Thomas ate my mother’s Midsummer tart was on our wedding day, and he enjoyed it so much then that I have made one every Midsummer since.
Chapter Seventeen
1514
BEFORE THOMAS DEPARTED FOR Flanders, his father was laid to rest in the churchyard of St Mary’s in Putney. It was a sad occasion because, although Thomas had always found his father difficult, he insisted that he owed him familial respect and he provided a great funeral feast for his father’s friends in Putney.
‘Family matters,’ he said on that chilly afternoon by his father’s grave. ‘You can always trust your family.’
‘Indeed,’ I replied, without genuine commitment, because I had not always trusted Father, nor Tom Williams either.
Thomas was a worldly man and he had a strong sense of whom he would trust. I had been so used to keeping my first husband’s secret that I was inclined to trust very few. There were things you could not even tell your family.
After their father’s death, Eliza, Thomas’ sister, and her husband lived on in the Putney house owned by his family. Thomas was content to permit this. Wellifield had managed everything, the inn, the brewery and his flock of sheep. Their son, Christopher, was born that spring. On the few occasions I met Eliza after my betrothal, we had little to say to each other. Tom’s sister talked boastfully of how she and Wellifield hoped for a company of sons to continue their great lineage. What lineage, I wondered to myself, thinking that, unlike my mother who was descended from minor nobility, they probably had no ancestry worth remark. I was quietly pleased that I rarely saw her. Cat, of course, was different. I enjoyed her company and she fast became the friend I had often wished for but never had.
Thomas’ agent had sold my cloth in Antwerp for a generous price and when Thomas had returned to Flanders in 1514, he purchased a dozen ells of damask mixed with linen in various hues of lavender, rose and soft green. He sent the fabrics back to me along with a gift, one of many I received from him that spring. The first token of his love meant more to me than all the others - a pair of soft kidskin gloves wrapped in painted paper rather than linen, valuable paper that was stamped with gold angels along with a message - To keep your hands warm until I can hold them again, my Elizabeth. May God and all his angels protect you, my dearest love.
I owned many pairs of gloves and kept them with dried rose petals in a cedar-wood coffer. I had leather gloves for riding, others of canvas for gardening, every-day gloves knitted from fine dyed linen threads to match my various gowns, two pairs of silk knit gloves, and mittens to ward off the winter cold. I even had a pair made from fragile soft chicken-skin, to wear at night to keep my hands soft, though I rarely wore these. I held up Thomas’ gift and admired the quality and the colour. They were dyed a soft rose and their scalloped cuffs were edged with silver flowers.
The messenger was returning to Antwerp within the week, so I asked him to carry a letter to Thomas. For two whole days, I thought long and hard as to what I could send Thomas as a token of my love. I searched the best goldsmiths’ shops for a ring, but instead, after much searching, I found a poky little place in a narrow lane off the main thoroughfare where I purchased silver aglets for his clothing laces and gold beads for his cap. Of late, gentlemen were pinning gold baubles and semi-precious jewels onto the velvet that decorated the necks of their gowns as well as the fur trimming on their hats. Thomas would never buy such things for himself as he dressed plainly, though well, but a few of these tokens from me would not be ostentatious.
After I wrapped my gifts in velvet cloth, I wrote Thomas a letter describing my day-to-day life; how I had visited my mother and father on St Elizabeth’s Day, my name day; how I skated on the ice because that winter of 1514 was bitter and the manor pond froze. Joan had returned to Surrey with Harry, Alice and their children.
Before she left she had said, ‘I never shall return to live with our parents because Harry will help me to a good marriage.’
I had replied, ‘I hope, Joan, in the event, our brother finds you a wealthy suitor and one that is not old.’
I thought this might bring a smile to Thomas’ face.
Finally, I wrote that Cat, his sister, had come to visit, had skated with me on the pond in February and was well-liked by all my family.
Lent is hard to bear without you. I long to see you at my door wearing my tokens in the squirrel-fur trim on your bonnet.
Your Elizabeth.
Ribbons, girdles and bracelets of gold and silver set with semi-precious stones followed, and every time I opened a new parcel, cast the linen wrappings aside and called Meg to share my joy, my heart lifted and tilted towards Flanders and Thomas.
It was not just I who was greeting every dawn with joy that spring. Another surprise arrived when Meg flew in my chamber one morning flushed and excited.
‘Look what Gerard Smith has given me, Mistress Elizabeth.’
She lifted up a small cage with a songbird in it. ‘May I keep it?’
I stared at the tiny fragile creature which tweeted its little melody up at me. ‘Of course, Meg. Hang it in your chamber window.’ Then I frowned at the cage. ‘I hope Smith’s intentions are honest, Meg.’
‘Shame, Mistress, he is but a friend. The gift is by way of repayment for my stitching and mending for him. Marry not, not Gerard Smith.’
But she was blushing as rosy as the painted cage she was holding. I smiled as she left my chamber, the bird singing sweetly in its cage that rocked as she walked away with swaying hips.
That February, I sent Smith to sell the damask at the Drapers’ Guildhall, though I set aside the length of rose damask mix for my wedding gown. Smith sold all of my cloth to a merchant tailor who created magnificent gowns for courtiers. Many court ladies preferred the lightness and the patterns that shot through the mixed fabrics to wools and linen. I was growing rich and a year had not passed since Tom Williams’ death. I had succeeded in my desire to have a successful cloth business.
As I felt the clink of coin rattle into my coffer again, I congratulated myself that I could afford my own wedding feast. It would be held in my Wood Street house that June. My father was not as fortunate with his cloth sales as I. Master Northleach had not returned and by February Father insisted that he had been hoodwinked by a rogue. Northleach had disappeared just as surely as the villains who had attacked Toby, without trace, so I wrote to Thomas asking him to find out what he could about the middleman.
Thomas returned briefly in March with gifts for us all: a length of soft green Spanish wool for my mother, a cloak trimmed with silver fox fur for my father. He gave me a printed Latin psalter with its pictures of the seasons touched with gold. From his cavernous leather travelling chest, he also produced a fashionable chain o
f gold studded with garnets for me to wear about my neck on my wedding day. In return, I gave him a ring, inscribed Una in perpetuum: together forever, a sentiment I hoped that he would always treasure.
On the evening of a visit to the Putney manor, he told Father that although he had inquired amongst the merchant adventurers in Antwerp, Bruges and Middleburg, all places where merchants traded, he had not been able to discover Edward Northleach’s whereabouts. He had seen a record of the sale of Father’s wool in Antwerp and even found out where Northleach had lodged during the previous autumn. The middleman then simply vanished.
‘He left without paying his bills.’ Thomas shook his head. ‘The trail disappeared. I have a hunch he may be in France, though where, I cannot discover.’
‘Scoundrel,’ Father said angrily, the veins in his forehead swollen and his face as red as the flames in the hall hearth.
‘Sir, I shall try harder to find out about him.’
‘I would that you could, Thomas,’ Father said. ‘He has robbed me of a fortune.’
‘I have to travel to Italy this month. Perhaps I can inquire on my travels.’ He looked at us all in turn. There was a steely determination in his grey eyes.
I raised my eyebrows. ‘That might help.’ I took a deep breath and asked, ‘Why are you travelling to Italy before our wedding?’
‘Money for our new house, for us, Lizzy. It is for profit, believe me, not for the sake of my soul nor for yours. I am employed by Cardinal Bainbridge as an agent in a mercantile case involving the Church because I speak Italian fluently.’ He leaned forward. ‘The task will be completed within a week. I have no desire to linger amongst the Holy Father’s sycophants. Rome has turned away from truth and modest living. Cardinals take mistresses, install them in palaces, breed children and the Pope places all his own illegitimate off-spring in positions of authority. They live off the fat of the land. I am happy to take their silver.’ He looked pleased.
The Woman in the Shadows: Tudor England through the eyes of an influential woman Page 13