‘Tobias de Bohun,’ Toby said. I started, for I had never heard Toby’s full name.
‘A noble name.’ The Sergeant bowed, clearly impressed.
Colour flooded back into Toby’s cheeks. ‘A very, very minor branch of a noble family. To join the King’s Yeomen Guard is my dream.’
‘The name, none the less, carries honour. Report to me tomorrow by the noon bells. Ask for Justin St Clare.’
‘I shall, Master St Clare. Thank you.’
I shook my head and said firmly, ‘To be a yeoman of the guard is a deadly occupation. I should know, and you, Toby, should return to the country. London is a cruel place. Anyone from outside is an alien.’
‘All life is dangerous.’
Disheartened, I said we’d best be on our way, adding brightly, ‘Wait until Meg sees you. She lives in the Cornhill shop now.’
‘Mistress Elizabeth, you may be an angel, but I am not running away again.’ He glanced down at my little ones. ‘And these must be your children.’ The children stared blankly up at him. He turned to Barnaby then, ‘Barnaby, you remember the fire in Mistress Elizabeth’s stores, over in Wood Street?’
‘How could I forget it?’
‘That man was one of the arsonists.’
‘It was nearly ten years since,’ Barnaby said. ‘I had just begun my apprenticeship.’
‘They have long memories.’
‘It would seem so,’ I said, feeling anxious.
‘I want to see the dancing, Mama,’ Grace said, and I was glad of the distraction.
‘You promised,’ Annie whinged.
‘Later. Let’s find Meg and have a bite of supper first. Are you hungry, sweetings? You never ate your dinner.’
Both girls nodded. Bessie smiled and simpered, all huge eyes for Toby. She had been a chit of a girl when she had first known him, only twelve years old. Now she was a young woman of twenty-two and my own maid, risen high in our Fenchurch Street house since Meg had become a married woman. As for Toby, he was some years older and likely to have a wife, or at the very least a betrothed. Poor Bessie, I thought. She is besotted.
As we walked along Cheape Street and up Cornhill, lumbering carts passed us on their way back down the hill; tradesmen’s apprentices called out their wares; cooking smells from the bakers’ shops accosted our noses speeding us forward. Glancing up at the sky through gaps in roofs, I made the hour to be the fourth after midday already. A group of townspeople bearing baskets with miserable angry crowing cocks peeping out of them passed. I hurried us on. Cock fights distressed me and they were best avoided.
‘Pity Master Smith is not with Meg today, Toby. He was called away to help Thomas with the Cardinal’s pageant.’
‘They are wed, he and Mistress Meg?’ Toby asked with a bemused smile.
‘Yes and they have a child, a boy, a year older than Gregory. There would be a place for you, Toby, in the cloth business, I am sure, if you were interested. Thomas would happily train you to be a clerk.’
‘No, Mistress Elizabeth. I know my future now. Thank you all the same.’
I murmured a silent prayer for Toby. We could never know our futures in such a fragile world as ours, as delicate and intransient as a butterfly’s wing.
‘May the Lord and all his saints be blessed, it’s never Master Toby,’ Meg declared on opening her door to our knocking. Her eyes just flitted past us to Toby’s laughing face. ‘God bless us all. What are you doing here and with the mistress too?’
Her son slid behind her skirts at the sight of the tall young knight, and ran off along the corridor towards the kitchen.
He hid behind the wood pile until the girls persuaded him out into the parlour with promises of play. As Meg’s maid laid the parlour table with our May Day supper, the children withdrew into the window alcove and played with a collection of wooden novelties that Meg kept stored in a small coffer. They played happily until we called them to the trestle. They gasped with delight at Meg’s feast, but, after their first moments of joy, my girls contained their greed with agonising restraint. Our children understood the importance of good manners. They did not dare to speak at table unless addressed.
All through supper, Toby entertained us with tales of his adventures, how his uncle exploited him and wanted him to wed an alderman’s shrew-like youngest daughter so he could better their family’s connections.
‘Not for me, not a life as a merchant with my uncle, and I could never live with a hen-pecking wife. There is as yet much to discover in life,’ he said, his mouth full of plum tart. He reached for one of the delectable isinglass squares. ‘Should we really be eating these? They are too beautiful to munch away to nothing - like church windows.’ He sat it on the wooden dish, his eating knife placed beside it, wiped the crumbs from his mouth with his napkin and said, ‘I shall just admire these, Mistress Meg.’ He was, as ever, charming us all, even Meg, who had not loved him well.
Meg had developed a business weaving patterned ribbons and silken braids. She had promised Annie and Grace small May Day fairings of silk ribbons. The girls, excited by their fairings, insisted that Bess took them up to one of the two sleeping chambers above the large parlour to plait their hair with their new ribbons. They reappeared, visions in colourful silk carefully threaded through their braids. We all had to admire the result, and Meg’s weaving skills.
Bessie smiled at Toby when he admired her hairdressing and he smiled back, his blue eyes bright and sparkling. She had grown into a beautiful young woman with wide-set green eyes and golden curling hair. They complimented each other, two golden angels. I wondered if Toby would resist her charms. Annie and Grace ran to the window where they looked out at the street longingly and waited patiently for us to take them back to the Maypole. From time to time they would reach up and finger their silken braids.
Meg’s little maid and Bessie cleared the table. Gregory had fallen asleep, his face smeared with cream. The children’s nurse wiped the mess away with her napkin and said that she would carry him home, if there was company to walk with her. I said that if the girls wanted to watch the dancing for a little while, I would take them back to the Maypole. Richard offered to accompany us. Toby stood, stretched and said, ‘I have lodgings in Gracechurch Street. I can walk Master Cromwell and his nurse home. I have had enough for today.’ He bowed. ‘Remember me to Master Thomas, Mistress Elizabeth. We are almost neighbours.’ Turning to Meg, he said with smiling charm, ‘I thank you, Mistress Meg. Remember me to Master Gerard.’ He chucked Meg’s son under his chin. This time the boy did not hide from Toby behind his mother’s kirtle.
Meg said, ‘Master Toby, we are always here if you need us. There will be a bed for you.’
‘As if, after that feast, I ever would forget to visit.’
Meg wrapped up a loaf of her bread in a cloth and two meat pies in another. ‘Take these in case you are hungry later.’
Toby gratefully accepted the gift.
As we left to walk in opposite directions, the Church bells began to ring marking the Vespers hour, the fifth after midday. We waved Toby goodbye. Bessie ran back to him with a little faring, a plaited lavender and yellow silk braid that Meg had given her. He slipped it through his belt and threw her a kiss. For some reason, I remembered the small printed book I had left lying on top of my chamber linen coffer that morning. Like a sombre cloud tarnishing the azure sky, marring what had been a day of happy reunion, without warning, a shadow settled about me, tightening my chest. As the last church bell rang out, I fingered the jet beads hanging from my waist, and whispered an Ave Maria.
Chapter Thirty-six
THE SMALL LEATHER-BOUND BOOK lay unopened on top of my linen chest until Thomas sent me a message from Greenwich saying he would be home in a few days’ time. I sighed because Parliament would reconvene once the holiday passed and I would not see him again for weeks.
I picked the little volume up intending to place it into the bookshelf in his closet off the hall, but I could not resist satisfying my inquisit
ive mind. There was something about this book that made me feel uneasy. Carefully, I opened its stamped leather covers and, at once, felt the same gloomy presentiment I had felt on May Day when I first discovered it, a thought I had shaken off as absurd. I must not be suspicious. Surely it was nothing but my imagination playing tricks with my mind. Thomas was always purchasing new books in Paternoster Row close to St Paul’s for his growing library. Why would a book give off a sense of foreboding- unless, perhaps, it contained heretical teachings?
The flyleaf innocently displayed the title: Flores. Thomas enjoyed our small garden. He particularly liked roses, whereas I preferred herbals and plants we could eat, use in recipes or infuse with varying ingredients to make medicinal potions which I carefully labelled and stored in the still room.
I had been about to turn over the page when my eye scrolled below the title to where I found inscribed in a feminine hand For Thomas, and then, From Jeanette with my enduring love. Christmastide, 1518.
Stepping backwards, I sank onto my bed, the book opened on my lap. I could not fully absorb what I was reading and so I read the words over and over until I knew them by rote. I looked at the date again. 1518, so long ago now. I had given birth to Gregory since.
I felt all colour drain from my face. I studied the elaborate signature. She had drawn the pansy below it, that flower which significantly we so often called heartsease. Who was this Jeanette? I reasoned that if the volume of flowers was a lover’s gift, Thomas would not have left it in his cloak pocket. I frantically flicked the pages over to see if there had been anything penned in the margins that might reveal who this Jeanette was. The book contained wood cuts showing familiar flowers: the Christmas Rose that flowered to honour the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ; Our Lady’s Keys, the flower of Our Lady; Our Lady’s Eyes, and Foxgloves that were Our Lady’s gloves.
I turned back to Heartsease, the Herb Trinity because of its white, yellow and purple colouring. I glanced up at the painting of Our Lady that hung in the alcove, my long-ago betrothal gift. Her gown was blue and there were white, yellow and purple flowers in the painting, all of these the colours of heartsease.
I sat worrying until the Vespers bells began to ring. I closed the little book, but instead of taking it to the closet shelves, I replaced it on top of my coffer. Slowly, I climbed down the staircase into the hall where Bessie was seated by a window embroidering a belt purse.
‘Bess.’ She started. ‘We are attending Vespers this evening. Fetch our cloaks.’ I was more snapping than was fair. Bessie jumped at my command, tucked her needlework into its linen bag and ran to fetch our summer cloaks.
The sky was spread as blue as Our Lady’s mantle but I had no joy of it. I walked at such a fast pace to St Gabriel’s, Bessie could hardly keep up. She trotted behind me uncomplaining, like a princess’ faithful lap dog. We entered the nave as the priests were beginning the service. I genuflected. Bessie followed my lead. After a quick glance around, I drew her away from the main aisle since the nave where most people stood was filled with merchants’ wives, pewterers’ wives, ironmongers’ wives, bakers’ wives, and city merchants who all wandered about quietly forging deals following their day’s work. In the midst of the women who stood nearest to the doorway, I spotted Mistress Watt. I whispered, ‘Bessie, hurry, Mistress Watt is over there by that pillar.’
Bessie nodded and we slipped into my favourite alcove, approached an altar to Our Lady and knelt at a distance apart. When I heard Bessie’s beads clacking, I knew she was reciting prayers. I had given her a small illustrated Book of Hours as a New Year’s gift and Bessie, to my surprise, already knew many of its verses by heart. As a ray of sunshine shafted from a high window, scattering light over her, I saw that she was beautiful as she knelt lost in her prayers and I wondered, and I am ashamed to admit this thought, if I had lost my fine looks, and if Thomas had tired of me.
I collected myself and turned my thought to the prayer for the innocents of Bethlehem. That upset me too. I could not help my errant mind, for I wondered if I was suffering a terrible betrayal. My thoughts revisited occasions when Thomas had returned from the north in a state of restless anxiety and how I had banished my suspicions on those occasions. Recollecting the roses and heartsease and that telling inscription in the book, I wondered could I ever forgive my husband if he had taken a mistress. But, had Thomas taken a mistress? Surely my suspicions were unfounded and without justice?
At length, as I prayed for guidance, my distress lessened. If Thomas had taken a mistress, was it such a terrible thing? Was it, if he still loved his Elizabeth? Many a woman welcomed the removal of a husband’s physical attentions. But I was not one of these tolerant wives. Anger and jealousy, not admirable emotions, haunted the very thought that Thomas might have given his love to another.
I rose just as those gathered in the nave were making their way towards the great west door. To my relief, I couldn’t see Mistress Watt amongst them, rather a group of women gossiping. I heard them mention Queen Catherine. I reached my hand out to stay Bessie and paused momentarily to listen.
‘My husband says King Henry has taken a new mistress. No one knows who she could be?’
Another snorted. ‘How do you know?’
‘She has received a gift of a brooch, a ruby set in silver from the King. My own husband was commissioned for its making. He carried it to Westminster for her himself, in a silver casket.’ She lowered her voice. ‘And it has been paid for by the King. It was a May Day gift. We have a receipt for it.’
There was a collective gasp. One of them nastily said, ‘I expect my husband will be asked to provide her, whoever she is, with a striped yellow bonnet.’
‘Hush, Alison. Such words could be treason one day. The King will not have ill spoken of his women. They are not common prostitutes. They are of the highest nobility.’
‘Poor Queen Catherine. How can she bear it? Men cannot be trusted. They think with their shafts.’
‘Shush! What a thing to say. Poor Princess Mary. I hope she knows nothing of her father’s women.’
‘She will know who Henry Fitzroy is.’
They moved away. I waited for a few moments and followed them out into the sunlight, Bess’s clogs clattering on the pavement behind me.
My husband was not like King Henry, spoiled and greedy. But then, how was I to know. Thomas was rising. He was becoming an important man in the City. Important men considered themselves differently to ordinary people. They kept mistresses and their wives ignored their infidelity. Wives had no choice, unless they chose to enter seclusion. I wondered if Queen Catherine would choose a convent to life at court. She was a queen and queens did not easily relinquish their thrones. There had been talk about her previous marriage to the King’s brother, Arthur. It was said amongst the City merchants that the Pope had granted them a dispensation, so her marriage to King Henry must be a true marriage. So deep in thought was I, as I walked home with Bess by my side, I never noticed Mistress Watt sidling up to me.
‘My son says Master Cromwell is in Parliament now. I hope that since he mixes with the great in the land, he will forget that debt my son owes him.’
I said sharply, ‘I do not know anything of that part of my husband’s business, Mistress Watt. I suggest you petition him yourself.’
‘Petition him now, is it? I would, if I could, but he is never at home, is he, Mistress Cromwell?’
‘He is in Parliament. Good day to you, Mistress Watt.’
We had reached the gate into the courtyard. I hurried through it with Bessie closely behind me, looking like a hound this time rather than a lap dog. I could sense her bristling as Mistress Watts slid off, her heavy cloak draped about her shoulders despite the warmth of a May afternoon.
That evening, Thomas lifted the book from the coffer. ‘Where did you find this, Elizabeth?’
‘In your cloak pocket. I was looking for an over-gown. It fell out.’
‘I see.’
He stood, deep in thought, by the case
ment. Uncomfortably, I waited.
After a while, he turned to me; too long, I thought. His look was sad and his grey eyes were glazed over with tears. I had never seen Thomas weep before, yet a tear rolled down his cheek. He looked away and for a moment I felt sorry for my husband. I was fearful of what he might be about to say. He stared from the window into the lemon sunlight, the book in his palm unopened and I wondered what he saw out there in that strange light.
When he turned back from the casement, his eyes were dry. He frowned. ‘Have you looked through this book, Lizzy?’
‘Yes,’ I said quietly. ‘I have. Who is she? Why has she given you a token?’
‘Elizabeth, you must not question me in this way. Nor should you investigate my cloak pockets. There are things a husband and wife do not share. If others find certain things of mine and carry them to the wrong person, it could cause trouble for me and for you too. That is one reason why you must not pry.’ He looked stonily at me. ‘I must be sure that I can trust you not to meddle. You must not try to find out more than I tell you.’
‘I wasn’t prying. That little volume is just a book of flowers, though the hand that wrote your name is that of a woman called Jeanette.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Who is Jeanette, pray?’
He held my questioning look with a cool glare of his own. His face had become inscrutable again. ‘I do not wish to speak of her, but rest assured, Elizabeth, she is of no worry or threat to you; nor is she of interest to you.’
He gently lifted the book from the coffer and left me sitting on swirling embroidered tendrils and flowers stitched on silk. There would be no further explanation forthcoming today. His eyes had filled with tears, and this aroused my suspicion. Our bedchamber which had been filled with lemon sunshine now held dark shadows, and amongst these dwelled secrets as deeply stitched as the leaves on our silken counterpane. Even though the secret I kept for Tom Williams had been a furtive and dangerous one, it was one I knew about. In guarding Tom’s confidence, I had not felt excluded from his life. It had been an unhappy marriage. I had not loved him but the agony of betrayal was less because he never had been a recipient of my love. Now, I was overcome with a sense of loss because Thomas Cromwell, whom I loved with all my being, had refused me his trust.
The Woman in the Shadows: Tudor England through the eyes of an influential woman Page 29