by Mary Hooper
Chapter Three
The hard frost passed but, while I waited to hear when we’d be going to London, the days seemed grey and dreary. Every day I thought about Tomas and could not help but imagine him and his new lady friend becoming closer and more intimate. In my mind’s eye I saw them riding together, making music, dancing and reading poetry; genteel pursuits which a maidservant might hear about but have no true knowledge of.
A week or so after the Court left for Whitehall the day seemed especially drear, so I decided to take the girls for a walk on Barnes Common and call upon Isabelle to share my gossip about the queen. Mistress Midge refused to have the monkey left with her as he’d taken to pulling her hair, so he had a bonnet placed on his head by Beth and, swaddled warmly in a woollen shawl, allowed himself to be carried along like a babe in arms.
Isabelle’s home was very humble – even more so than my own home in Hazelgrove – being a hut composed of wattle walls plastered over and shuttered windows without glass. There was a fireplace, but no proper chimney, so whenever the door was opened it caused the smoke to billow and engulf the occupants within. It did this as Isabelle’s mother came to the door in response to my call, along with four or five chickens which she quickly ushered back inside. She smiled at me, then dropped a curtsey when she saw that I was accompanied by Beth and Merryl, knowing that these were the children of the queen’s magician.
‘Your mistress has a new baby?’ she said in surprise, looking at the bundle carried by Beth.
I shook my head, laughing. ‘She gave birth some months ago – but that’s not the child.’
Beth held up the bundle to her and Isabelle’s mother, seeing his funny little monkey-face, started back in surprise.
‘It’s a monkey – the children’s pet. He’s quite harmless,’ I added.
‘Indeed.’ I saw her glance go over the garments that the children were wearing and then she looked down at herself, pulling her shawl down over her patched kirtle in an effort to hide it. ‘Some children have dogs as pets, and some have kits, but I’ve not heard of anyone having a monkey.’
As the smoke blew past us I heard Isabelle’s little sister, Margaret, coughing. ‘But I mustn’t keep you,’ I said, ‘I just came to see if Isabelle is quite well, for I’ve looked for her in the market these days past and haven’t seen her.’
Isabelle’s mother shook her head, nervously fiddling with one of the ties of her jacket. ‘No, she’s not been out a-selling, she’s been laid up for some days with a dizziness in the head.’
‘Oh. Is she … still poorly?’ I asked, trying to peer through the darkness and the smoke of the cottage to see if Isabelle was within.
‘No, she was feeling a little better today, and has gone out.’
I turned to go. ‘So will she be at her selling space in the market?’ I asked, for this was where Isabelle was usually to be found.
She shook her head. ‘Today she’s gone to church to be a mourner at a funeral.’
I was not surprised at this, for Isabelle was mistress of all trades and it was nothing for her to be trading in the market one day, working as a washerwoman the next and collecting pots in a tavern on the third.
‘Is that in Mortlake?’
‘No, at St Mary’s in Barnes. ’Tis one of the nobility being buried,’ she added, ‘and Isabelle has been given a new pair of black leather gloves and a length of costly black muslin she must drape about her head.’
‘Then I’ll go and see if I can find her,’ I said, and set off across the common with the girls beside me, thinking that a funeral – especially if it was a member of the gentry who was being buried – would be a curious thing to see.
On the way across the common Tom-fool got tired of playing a babe in arms and, escaping from the swaddling, pulled off his bonnet and threw it into a tree. He then began leaping across our shoulders, trying to pull off each of our head coverings in turn. Luckily, sensible Merryl had brought some string to use as a lead and we slipped this around his collar so he couldn’t completely escape from us.
The only people standing outside the church when we arrived were two ostlers holding the reins of the glossy dark horses that had pulled the funeral carriage. This was standing, empty, in the lane. I didn’t intend to go into the church (I could well envisage the mischief an excitable monkey might wreak on the solemn offices of a funeral service), so we stood in the graveyard, reading out the epitaphs on the stones while we waited for the service to be over. There was a yew tree planted by the gate and Tom-fool slipped his string leash, leapt into this and began to climb to the top.
Through the closed door of the church I could hear the minister speaking, though couldn’t make out his exact words. When he stopped, there were several moments’ silence and then the bells began tolling. Hearing this and knowing the service was at an end, I retreated with the girls behind the churchyard wall to watch the rest of the goings-on.
It was immediately clear that someone from a noble family was involved when the church doors opened and two grand aldermen in black-and-gold gowns appeared carrying staves and bearing wooden shields painted with a coat of arms. After these came two heralds with banners, then four men wheeling a kind of hand-carriage, upon which rested the coffin, this being covered with a glossy, black velvet pall, heavily fringed in gold and bearing the same arms. The family followed behind (two women, both crying, and many men), then the paid mourners. These consisted of twelve boys of graduated heights all carrying painted wooden shields, and twelve girls holding billowing black feathers. They were clothed and veiled identically so that I could not tell which girl was Isabelle.
‘I think it’s someone from the Walsingham household who’s dead,’ Beth said in a whisper. ‘I recognise the colours of his coat of arms.’
‘Are you sure?’ I asked, and before the words were half out of my mouth saw the stately figure of Sir Francis Walsingham, whom I recognised from Court, emerge from the darkness of the church dressed from head to toe in black velvet. Some passers-by had gathered to watch the cortège move in procession through the graveyard, and I ascertained from a stout goodwife that it had indeed been a relative of Sir Francis who’d died.
‘It was only a distant cousin,’ she whispered, ‘but he bears the Walsingham name and so must be buried with all due ceremony.’
‘He was young?’ I asked.
‘I believe he was twelve.’ She pointed towards the mourners. ‘There are two times twelve mutes for each year of his life.’
I nodded. ‘My friend is there amongst them.’
‘And my son!’ she exclaimed proudly. ‘There he is, one of the smallest. He’s earned himself a fine pair of leather gloves, a black cloak and a silver sixpence today.’
I murmured approval.
‘He’s near nine years old, but passes for five or six because he’s so small. He’s much in demand for children’s funerals.’
‘And are all the other mourners local children?’
She shook her head. ‘They couldn’t find enough of the right size, so they had to hire them from Christ’s Hospital. Such a fuss and bother! The children all came down by cart late yesterday and had to sleep in a farmer’s barn the night.’
‘What is Christ’s Hospital?’ I asked curiously.
‘Oh, ’tis a home in London for orphans and foundlings where they hire out the children for any occasion. ’Tis grim there, by all accounts. I tell my own lad that if he misbehaves, that’s where he’ll end up!’
We watched in silence as the coffin was lowered into its final resting place. By this time my girls were complaining that their hands and feet were cold, and Tom-fool must have felt this too, for he returned, shivering, from the yew tree and crawled under Merryl’s shawl to warm himself.
The minister began to speak again and, seeing that the paid mourners remained in the church porch, some distance from the family, I took the opportunity to go and speak to Isabelle. It did not take long to ascertain which was she, for one of the veiled shapes dropped th
eir pious demeanour on seeing me and smiled and waved.
‘Don’t tell me that you’ve come to say goodbye,’ she said after greeting me.
I shook my head. ‘I have not – not yet. I still don’t know when I’ll be going to London.’
‘Well, I’m glad of that,’ she said. ‘I know you’re anxious to see your Tomas again, but I shall miss you very much.’
‘And I shall miss you,’ I said, squeezing her hand. I looked across to the funeral party. ‘Will you be finished here now that the corpse is in the ground?’
She shook her head. ‘We have to accompany the party home – and then we can attend the funeral feasting after.’ She lowered her voice. ‘The family generally have no appetite, so there’ll be plenty to eat.’
She was standing beside a small child. Like the other boys, he was dressed in black doublet and breeches, with a black cloak on top. On his head he wore a close-tied black linen coif with earpieces, such as old men wear to their beds, and this gave him an odd, animal-like appearance.
The boy rubbed his stomach. ‘The feasting is the best part! There will be capons and rabbits and roast swans!’
‘There may be,’ Isabelle said cautiously. ‘But sometimes the family think it more appropriate that we fast, thinking that our aching stomachs will help us look more mournful.’
The boy groaned. ‘Never!’
I smiled at him. ‘I’ve just been speaking to your ma. Is that her over by the churchyard wall?’
He shook his head. ‘Nah, Missus. Ain’t got no ma – and no pa either.’
‘You must have had at one time,’ I said.
‘Not me! Left outside Christ’s Horspiddle, I was!’
I looked at him more closely and saw that under his hood his hair was cropped very short, workhouse-style. ‘You are one of the foundling boys?’ I asked.
‘That’s right, Missus. And when we gets back it’ll be too late for vittles, and Matron takes our sixpences off us and our new gloves and cloaks, so all we’ll be left with is what we’ve scoffed. If we don’t get nothing here I’ll starve.’
I was about to sympathise when Merryl waved her hand to draw my attention. ‘We are both very cold!’ she hissed at me accusingly, so I quickly bade goodbye to Isabelle, saying that I’d be in the market place the next morning and that we could talk then. ‘I have much to tell you about the queen,’ I said in a low voice.
Isabelle’s eyes gleamed. ‘News of Her Grace? I shall see you tomorrow!’
The little boy pulled at my hand. ‘Are those two girls yours, Missus?’ he said, nodding towards Beth and Merryl.
‘Do I look old enough for that?’ I said, smiling. ‘No, I’m their nursemaid.’
‘And do you all live in a big house together, with their ma and pa and so on?’
‘We do.’
‘Well, ain’t that nice,’ he said, and turning to the girls, he gave a little mock bow in their direction.
I patted his head, forgetting how much little boys hate this and causing him to scowl at me. ‘I hope you get some vittles,’ I said.
I glanced over at the family mourners before I left the church. The two ladies had retired into their carriage but a dozen or so gentlemen – including the imposing Sir Francis – were standing about the newly dug grave while the minister gave his eulogy.
I bade farewell to the goodwife and the girls and I set off for home. I didn’t find out until later that someone was watching intently to see the direction we took …
Chapter Four
The next morning, Isabelle heard my story of the queen and Sir Robert Dudley, gasping with surprise all the while.
‘God save us all!’ she said when I’d finished. ‘And what do you think will happen to Sir Robert now?’
‘She’ll take away all his privileges, no doubt. And for sure she’ll ban him and his new wife from Court.’
Isabelle nodded. ‘Perhaps she’ll look again at her list of suitors and choose one to marry to make Sir Robert jealous.’
‘Perhaps she will,’ I agreed. ‘They say foreign princes surround her like bees about a hive.’
‘But do you think she’ll ever marry?’ Isabelle mused. ‘What she seems to enjoy best is having a parade of dashing suitors competing for her attention with expensive presents and jewellery.’
I nodded and could not help but smile, for we were talking once more of our favourite subject: the queen and her would-be lovers. ‘But once she’s chosen someone, then the compliments and gifts and gee-gaws from all the others will stop coming, and she won’t like that a bit!’
I’d found Isabelle at her usual place in the market, selling onions. There was a wooden crate full of these in front of her, all nicely rounded, looking firm and of a good colour. Behind her, however, there was another crate and some of these were misshapen, some sprouting, some with a greenish tinge. Whenever a housewife stopped in front of the stall, drawn by Isabelle’s strident call of ‘Fresh and strong onions!’, she would proffer one of the good onions to feel and then, if the housewife wanted to buy, serve her from the other box (but with such clever sleight of hand that they did not see that they’d been hoodwinked).
I asked if she’d eaten well at the Walsingham’s funeral breakfast.
‘We did not eat at all,’ she said indignantly. ‘We followed the empty carriage back to the Walsingham estate – ’twas a goodly walk – but were sent packing with our sixpences before we’d hardly glimpsed the house. We went home with empty stomachs!’
‘Then the little boy I spoke to didn’t get his roast swan?’
She shook her head. ‘Someone came along, herded all the Christ’s Hospital children into a cart and took them back to London.’
‘Shame!’
She nodded. ‘Off they went with rumbling stomachs and many complaints.’
‘It must be hard to live in such a place as they do. They can’t get much care and attention.’
‘But ’tis better than being on the streets,’ Isabelle said. ‘Sonny – for that was the name of the boy you spoke to – told me that he’d lived a year or more in an empty beer barrel, coming out to beg his food by day and creeping back into it at night-time.’
I was shocked. ‘Do you think that true, or was he just saying it to gain your sympathy?’
She shook her head. ‘There are many who live like that in London – that and worse. I heard of two sisters who slept all year round on the foreshore of the river and had to move themselves every time the tide came in.’
‘’Tis much harder in a city,’ I conceded. ‘At least a homeless child around here could find a hedge to sleep under, or double up with the animals in a barn.’
A housewife came up to be served and insisted that she be allowed to pick and choose her own onions, so I left Isabelle to it and went home.
There I found Mistress Midge in a high old flap and much more like her usual self, bustling about, swearing under her breath, throwing utensils and crashing pots around for no good reason.
‘What do you think?’ she said. ‘You and I are to go to London the day after tomorrow! Dr Dee has secured us a place on a hired wherry going downriver, and we are to be taken as far as Puddle Dock – which is supposed to be close to the new lodgings.’
I felt a great surge of excitement.
‘But how we are supposed to get there with all the stuffs we have to take, the Lord only knows. Boxes of books for the master, household pans, linens for the bedchambers and bits of this and that – there is no end to it. I don’t know how two bodies can achieve it, indeed I don’t!’
‘What are the lodgings like?’
She shrugged. ‘Shabby, I should say, for no one has lived in them for some time. Someone has offered them to Dr Dee, however, and as long as they are cheap and near enough to Whitehall, that’s good enough.’ She gave a snort of derision. ‘And no matter if we have to work our fingers to the bone scrubbing, scouring, brushing, cleaning and making ready!’
‘When will the family follow us?’
&n
bsp; ‘Just as soon as we have near-killed ourselves getting things nice, I suppose.’ She took a deep breath. ‘But the mistress has just discovered she’s with child, so she may want to take a little more time about it.’
‘She is again with child? But the babe is only …’ I counted on my fingers, ‘four months old.’
‘These things happen.’ She shrugged. ‘And she’s not feeding Arthur herself. That might have safeguarded against another pregnancy.’
‘So that’s why she didn’t seem to recover from her lying-in,’ I said, for the mistress was weak and had hardly moved from her rooms all the time I’d lived in the house.
‘That will mean two Dee babes with a wet nurse by the end of the year – that won’t be cheap.’
Interesting though this line of conversation was, my main concerns were how I’d fare in London and how quickly I’d see Tomas. ‘How long do you think we’ll stay in the city?’ I asked.
She shrugged again. ‘Lord knows, and the Lord’s not telling. Now where’s that list of things we must take?’
For the rest of that day we were in a rush and a flurry, fetching and carrying things from Dr Dee and the mistress and packing them in boxes. Dr Dee supplied some old documents in order to wrap the kitchen bowls, and I studied them carefully, hoping to see what it was that he and Mr Kelly were continually working on. Not one word could I read, however, for although it was all written in Dr Dee’s neat hand, it was either lists and tables of numbers, or signs and cyphers.
Packing for Dr Dee was especially trying, for as soon as we had several of his great leather-bound volumes carefully wrapped and stowed he’d discover that he needed to consult them, or wanted to change them for others. While Mistress Midge’s lips moved in many a silent oath during these changes I managed to go about my duties smiling, for I was very much looking forward to being in London – especially knowing that for some little time Mistress Midge and I were going to be on our own. This, of course, would leave me more time to undertake tasks for Tomas.