by Jean Plaidy
“And he accepted them…from your hands?” demanded Mistress Middleton.
“He did indeed.” Thomas was remembering it all. It was only about his writing that he was a little vain; he made excuses for his vanity. Artistic talent, he was wont to say, is a gift from God. But he was conscious of his vanity, and he mocked himself while he treasured words of praise. And now at this moment he could not help recalling with pleasure the King’s delight in his verses.
As for Alice Middleton, she was looking at him with new respect.
For a lawyer and a scholar she had little to spare; for a man who had spoken with the King she had much.
THE NEXT two years were eventful ones for Margaret. For one thing, two people became very important to her. Both of these were visitors to the house; although one of these was a neighbor and a constant caller, the other lived with them as one of the family.
The first was Alice Middleton who made regular calls. Margaret did not love Mistress Middleton, although she recognized that lady’s wish to be kind. Mistress Middleton believed that everyone who did not do as she did must surely be wrong. If any household task was not done according to Mistress Middleton’s rule, it was not done in the right way. She would teach them how to bake bread in the only way to bake the best bread, and that was the way she always did it; she would show them how to salt meat in order to make the best of it. She would show how children should be brought up. They should be obedient to their elders; they should be whipped when stubborn; they should be seen and not heard, and not talk in heathen tongues which their elders could not understand.
What disturbed Margaret more than anything was the fact that her father did not feel as she did toward Mistress Middleton. She had watched his face as he listened to her tirades, and had seen the amused twitch of his lips; sometimes he would talk with her, as though he were luring her on to taunt him. She was a rude and stupid woman; yet he seemed to like her rudeness and her stupidity. And Margaret, who followed her father in most things, could not do so in this.
The other person was the exalted Erasmus.
Him, Margaret regarded with awe. He was now more famous than he had been in the days when he had first come to England. He was known all over the world as the greatest Greek scholar, and he was preparing to write a critical edition of the Greek text of the New Testament.
Margaret could understand her father’s affection for this great man, for Erasmus was worthy of his regard and friendship as Madam Alice could never be.
This Erasmus was a sick man. There were days when he could do nothing but lie abed. On such days Margaret would wait upon him, bringing to him the books he asked for. He had a great affection for Margaret and she was pleased that this should be so, largely because of the delight it gave her father. Thomas would openly sue for praise for his daughter as he never would for himself and Margaret felt very tender toward him as she watched his delight in the compliments Erasmus paid her.
Once Erasmus said: “I do not believe there is another girl—or boy—of this child’s age who can write and speak the Latin tongue as she does.” And afterward her father said to her: “Meg, this is one of the happiest days of my life. It is a day I shall remember on the day I die. I shall say to myself when I find death near me: ‘The great Erasmus said that of my daughter, my Meg.’”
She thought a good deal about Erasmus. He might be a greater scholar than her father—though she doubted this—but she did not believe he was such a brave man. There was a certain timidity in his manner; this had been apparent once when Alice Middleton was present and had spoken quite sharply to him—for Alice was no respecter of scholars, and the fame of Erasmus had not reached her ears. She obviously did not believe that a poor wisp of a man who, as she said, looked as though a puff from the west wind could blow him flat, was as important as they seemed to think. “Scholar! Foreigner!” she snorted. The sort of men she respected were those like the King: more than six feet tall and broad with it; a man who would know what to do with a baron of beef and a fat roast peacock…aye, and anything a good cook could put before him. She liked not this sly-looking man with his aches and pains. Greatest scholar in the world! That might be. But the world could keep its scholars, declared Mistress Alice.
Margaret said to Mercy: “No; he has not Father’s bravery. He would not have stood before Parliament and spoken against the King.”
“He has not Father’s kindness,” answered Mercy. “He would mock where Father pitied.”
“But how could we expect him to be like Father!” cried Meg; and they laughed.
Erasmus spent his days writing what he called an airy trifle, a joke to please his host who loved a joke, he knew, better than anything. He was too tired, he told Margaret, to work on his Testament. He must perfect his Greek before he attempted such a great task. He must feel sure of his strength. In the meantime he would write In Praise of Folly.
He read aloud to Thomas when he came home; and sometimes Thomas would sit by his friend’s bed with Margaret on one side of him, Mercy on the other; he would put an arm about them both, and when he laughed and complimented Erasmus so that Erasmus’s pale face was flushed with pleasure, then Margaret believed that there was all the happiness in the world in that room.
Erasmus poked fun at everybody…even at the scholar with his sickly face and lantern jaws; he laughed at the sportsman for his love of slaughter, and the pilgrims for going on pilgrimages when they ought to have been at home; he laughed at the superstitious who paid large sums for the sweat of saints; he laughed at schoolmasters who, he said, were kings in the little kingdoms of the young. No one was spared—not even lawyers and writers, although he was, Margaret noted, less severe with the latter than with the rest of the world.
And this was written with the utmost lightness, so that it delighted not only Thomas, but others of their friends, to picture Folly, in cap and bells, on a rostrum addressing mankind.
He stayed over a year in the house, and while he was there Thomas was made Under-Sheriff of the City of London, which was an honor he greatly appreciated. Alice Middleton, still a constant visitor, was delighted with this elevation.
“Ah,” Margaret heard Thomas say to her, “how pleasant it is to enjoy the reflected honors! We have neither to deserve them nor to uphold them. We bask in the soft light, whilst the other toils in the heat. The temperate rather than the torrid zone. So much more comfortable, eh, Mistress Middleton?”
“Tilly valley! I know not what you mean,” she told him sharply. “So you but waste your breath to say it.”
He explained to Margaret as he always explained everything: “The Mayor of London and the Sheriffs are not lawyers; therefore they need a barrister to advise them on various matters of law. That my Margaret, is the task of the Under-Sheriff who is now your father.”
And when he dealt with these cases he refrained, if the litigants were unable to pay them, from accepting the fees which had always previously been paid. This became known throughout the City. It was about this time that the people of London began to love him.
Margaret was very happy during those two years; she had learned the meaning of fear, and that lesson had made her happier, for with it had come the joy of being without fear. But there was another lesson to learn: It was that nothing in life was static.
First, Erasmus left for Paris, where he hoped to publish In Praise of Folly; and that was the end of the pleasant reading and discourse. Then Margaret’s mother took to her bed with a return of that weakness which had rarely left her since the birth of little Jack.
What they would have done during this time but for Alice Middleton, no one could say. Alice swept through the house like a fresh east wind, admonishing lazy servants, administering possets and clysters to Jane, boxing the ears of maids and menservants and the children when it seemed to her that they needed such treatment.
Gone was their gentle mother, and in her place was bustling and efficient, though sharp-tongued and heavy-handed, Dame Alice.
The
children looked at each other with solemn eyes.
“Will our Mother get well?” asked four-year-old Cecily.
Jack cried at night: “Where is our Mother? I want our Mother.”
“Hush,” said Margaret, trying to comfort him. “Mistress Middleton will hear your crying, and box your ears.”
When he fell and cut his knees, or whenever any of the children hurt themselves, it was Mercy who could bind up the wound or stop the bleeding. Mercy had the gentlest of hands, and the very caress of them could soothe a throbbing head.
“I should like to study medicine,” she confided to Margaret. “I believe it is the one thing I could learn more easily than you could. In everything else I believe you would do better than I. But not in that, Margaret.”
And Mercy began growing herbs at the back of the house; and she became very skilful in these matters. Thomas called her: “Our young doctor”!
But nothing Mercy grew in her border, and nothing she could do, made Jane well.
ONE DAY Jane called her eldest daughter to her.
Jane seemed to have grown smaller during the last few days; she looked tiny in the four-poster bed; and her skin was the same color as the yellow thread in the tapestry of the tester.
Margaret suddenly knew that her mother would not live long to occupy that bed.
“Margaret,” said Jane, “come close to me.”
Margaret came to the bed.
“Sit near me,” said Jane, “where I can see you.”
Margaret climbed on to the bed and sat looking at her mother.
“Margaret, you are only six years old, but you are a wise little girl. You seem all of eleven. I feel I can talk to you.”
“Yes, Mother.”
“I am going to die.”
“No…you must not. What can we do without you?”
Jane smiled. “Dear little Meg, those are sweet words. It is of when I am gone that I wish to speak to you. How I wish I could have waited awhile! Another seven years and I could have safely left my household in your hands.”
“Mother…Mother…do not say these things. They make me so sad.”
“You do not wish for change. None of us does. You will take care of your father, Margaret. Oh, he is a man and you are but a child…but you will know what I mean. Margaret, I can die happy because I have left you to your father.”
The tears began to fall down Margaret’s cheeks. She wished that she had given her mother more affection. She had loved her father so much that she had thought little of the quiet woman who, she now saw, had taken such an important place in their happy household.
“Mother…please…,” she began.
Jane seemed to understand.
“Why, bless you, Meg, it has been my greatest delight to see that love between you and your father. When we married I was afraid I was quite unworthy of him. I was so…unlearned; and at first I was unhappy. I would sit at the table trying so hard to study the Latin he had set me…yet knowing I would never learn it to his satisfaction. And then when you were born all my unhappiness vanished, because I knew that, although I could not make him an ideal wife, I had given him someone whom he could love better than anyone in the world. That was worthwhile, Margaret. I was happy then. And when I saw you grow up and become everything that he had desired, I was even happier. Then there was Elizabeth…then Cecily…and now Jack. You see, he has, as he would say, his quiver full. And but for me he could not have had you all. That is what I have told myself, and because of it I can die in peace. So do not reproach yourself, my little one, that you love him more than you do me. Love is not weighed. It flows. And how can we stem the flow or increase it? Margaret, always remember, my child, that if you have given him great happiness, you have given me the same. Come, kiss me.”
Margaret kissed her mother’s cheeks, and the clammy touch of her skin frightened her.
“Mother,” she said, “I will call Mercy. Mayhap she will know what would ease you.”
“One moment, dearest Meg. Meg…look after them all. My little Jackie…he is such a baby. And he is like me. I am afraid he will not be as good with his lessons as you girls are. Take care of him…and of little Bess and Cecily. And, Meg, I need not tell you to comfort your father, for I know that your very presence will do that. Oh, how I wish that this could have been delayed…a year or two…so that my Margaret was not such a child. You are a dear child, a clever child—never was one so clever—but…if only you had been a few years older I could be content.”
“Mother…please do not fret. I will be as though I have lived twelve years. I will. I swear it. But you will get well. You must. For what shall we do without you?”
Jane smiled and closed her eyes; and, watching, Margaret was filled with terror.
She ran from the room, calling Mercy; but it was Alice Middleton who came into the chamber of death.
A WEEK later Jane was dead; and only a month or so after she was buried, Thomas called his children to him and told them that they should not be long motherless.
He was going to marry a lady capable of looking after them, a lady of great virtue. She was without much education and several years older than himself, but he was convinced that she would be the best possible stepmother for them.
Her name was Alice Middleton.
3
WHEN MARGARET WAS TWELVE YEARS OLD FEAR AGAIN appeared in her life. It seemed like a great cloud which came nearer and nearer to the house until that day when it enveloped it. The cloud formed itself into the shape of a man, of great height, of great girth, on whose head there was a crown. At the age of four, Margaret had learned to fear kings. And now would the cloud pass over the house? Would it pass on as, once before, had a similar cloud?
Much had happened since the death of her mother. The family still lived in Bucklersbury, but it had become a different household under the domination of Mistress Alice.
It must have been the cleanest house in London; the rushes were changed once a week, and very little odor came from them. When they were removed from the house it was only necessary to go upstairs, not to leave the house for a day until the servants had cleared it of its filth. Alice was the most practical of women. She knew exactly how many pieces could be cut from a side of beef, and she saw that they were so cut; her servants must account for every portion of fish, every loaf of bread. She kept strict count of the visitors who called for a meal. She reckoned—and this matter she took up fiercely with her husband—that visitors were costing the household purse the whole of twopence a day, what with food, beds and firing. The family was allowed only sixty candles a year, and if any burned out his share before the year was over, then, said Alice grimly, must that one sit in the dark. She herself kept the keys of the buttery; she saw that none had more than his portion of ale or mead. She was the martinet of the household.
All Thomas’s attempts to teach her Latin failed.
“What the good year!” she cried in scorn. “Would you have me one of these pale-faced, lantern-jawed scholars? I’ll warrant you, Master More, that I do you more good watching the affairs of your household than I ever should tampering with foreign speech. The English tongue, sir, is good enough for me.”
But nevertheless she kept a strict eye on the children.
Thomas had instituted what he called his “School” in the house, and here all the children spent many hours at their lessons. Alice had a habit of peeping at them at odd moments, and if she found them not at their desks she would take them, throw them across a chair and administer a good beating with her slipper.
“Your father has set you these tasks,” she would say, “and your father is head of this house.” (Not that she would admit such a fact to his face.) “He’d not whip you himself, being too soft a man, so there’s some that has to do his duty for him. Now…get to that Latin…or Greek…or that mathematics…or whatever nonsense it is, and if you have not learned it by sundown you’ll feel more of my slipper where you won’t like it.”
Jack was the chief offende
r, because he could not love learning as his sisters did. Jack would look longingly out of the window, particularly when horsemen rode by. He would like to be out of London, in the green country, climbing trees and riding horses. Jack sometimes felt it was a sad thing to be a boy possessed of such clever sisters.
Ailie was not overfond of lessons, but she did not care to be too far outstripped by her stepsisters. She applied herself and as she had a cleverness of her own, a natural wit, she could usually appear to know more than she actually did. Her mother had a habit of looking the other way when Ailie misbehaved, so, although she might have been in trouble as much as Jack was, somehow she managed to escape it. She was very pretty, and Alice believed that one day she would make a very good match.
Alice insisted that each of the girls should study housekeeping under her guidance; for what, she had demanded, would be the use of all that learning if when they married—and if only Master More would make the most of his chances they might marry very well—they had no knowledge of how to run a house and keep the servants in order? So each of the girls must, in addition to her lessons, give orders to the servants, decide on the composition of meals and superintend the cooking for a whole week before the task fell to her sister or stepsister. And if anything went wrong, if the bread was burned or the meat had been subjected to too many turns of the spit, or not enough, then it was not only the servant who felt the mistress’s slipper.
Alice was not above giving any member of this large household the measure of her tongue. Even the tutors came in for their share, learned men though they might be. Master Nicholas Kratzer, fellow of Corpus Oxford, who had come to live in the house to teach the children astronomy, particularly irritated Alice.
She laughed him to scorn. “You, a scholar…and cannot speak the King’s English! Here’s a pretty state of affairs. And supposed to be a learned man!”
“Madam,” he told her with the humility all these great men seemed to display before Alice, for it was a fact that every one of them wilted under her scornful gaze, “I was born in Munich; and although I cannot speak your tongue well, I doubt you can speak mine at all.”