by Maeve Haran
She noticed the locket with the picture of my mother I was turning in my hands and flung it to the floor. ‘Do you think she would be proud of you?’
Loneliness swept over me, and I missed my life at Loseley so much I almost wept.
I slipped to my knees when my aunt had left the room and picked up my treasured trinket. ‘O Lord of Righteousness,’ I beseeched, ‘all-seeing God, assure me that in this I do your will, and act not out of pride and selfish arrogance, but true proper humility.’
I heard the door open and looked up, expecting Joan. But it was my sister Mary, so I rose to my feet in love and gratitude.
But Mary had not come to salve my loneliness.
Her face was almost as angry as my aunt’s and her voice crackled with harsh annoyance.
‘So, Ann, what is this nonsense I hear that you find the Court unpalatable to your saintly tastes? My brother-in-law Throckmorton sold lands to win his sister a place there, yet our aunt tells me you have the chance and hand it back like a hot pan that burns your delicate fingers.’
‘I am sorry but I cannot…’
‘Cannot! Cannot get a place that will help your whole family! You know how badly my husband and I need money and advancement, how close we are to the brink of disaster, and yet you act thus selfishly!’
‘I am sorry, Mary. Perhaps I may help in other ways.’
‘I greatly doubt it. Since my sister-in-law Bess is disgraced for marrying Sir Walter Ralegh, we had high hopes of you.’
‘Cannot you see, Mary, why I might not want a life where disgrace or advancement depend upon the Queen’s whim? When all around her wait for her to die while pretending she is the sun shining in the firmament? How, as they bow or curtsey, already they are calculating who will be the next in line to replace her?’
‘Sssh, Ann, you must not talk so.’ Mary looked behind her as if some spy might be lurking behind the tapestry.
I smiled. ‘You see, Mary, how indiscreet I am, how ill-suited to Court life where clearly discretion is all?’
Mary shook her head, suddenly relenting and holding her arms open to me. ‘What want you, then, you wild and silly girl?’
‘Oh, Mary,’ she was the eldest of us all, and had the mothering of us thrust upon her when she was but a child herself, after my mother died, ‘I truly know not.’
‘They will find you a husband, then.’
I stared out at the glittering river. ‘Frances says they have already started. What do you know of a Master Manners?’
‘Richard Manners? Handsome and amiable, with a reasonable income. You could do worse than he, Ann.’
‘He is the protégé of our dear stepmother.’
‘Ah. We should wonder what lies beneath the surface of the suggestion, then. Constance bears no tender love and maternal affection for us More girls. I will see what I can discover. By the way, good luck with the housewifery. I hear my lady aunt is to punish you by setting you to work with the servants.’
I had wondered what my punishment would be for my arrant disobedience. ‘I thank you, Mary, not to look so pleased at the prospect. It is better than spending another day at Court.’
‘Ann More,’ her voice held a grudging tenderness as if I were a child who had stolen a sweetmeat and curtsied when caught, ‘you are the most unnatural girl.’
‘Yes,’ I sighed, the loneliness descending again like a black crow, ‘that is a fact on which all are agreed.’
Chapter 4
‘COME, JOAN!’ MY aunt commanded her tire-woman, her anger against me still blowing as strong as ever. It had been almost a week now since I had spoken out and there had been no sign of my aunt relenting. ‘Dress Mistress Ann in plain clothing. Today she will assist you and Mercy at your tasks.’
‘You’ll need to take off your fancy partlet, mistress.’ I could see Joan thought me one step away from Bedlam to turn down a place at Court in exchange for washing dirty linen. ‘And those fine embroidered sleeves as well!’ She began to unlace me and replace my green silk gown with another in plain brown, the colour of slurry, made of hard, stiff worsted that rubbed instead of comforting. My fine stockings were thrown onto the bed in favour of itchy woollen ones, and my dear pointed shoes of green velvet with black frogging replaced by galoshes that seemed to be fashioned from sweaty and discarded saddles.
It seemed to me that Joan took rather too much delight in my transformation from fine lady to skivvy. When she was satisfied with my new clothing she raised a saucy eyebrow. ‘And what should I do with her hair, my lady? A maidservant would never have hair like Mistress Ann’s.’
Unlike most ladies of fashion I liked to wear my hair loose. Not long and flowing like the scandalous Lady Rich, sister of the Earl of Essex, but curling below my ears, that I might feel the wind in it when I ran or rode. I hated the coifs and French headdresses so many ladies wore so that they could not feel if it were calm or windy when they went abroad.
It gave Joan especial joy to scrape my hair back so that it was invisible, a hidden treasure beneath this drab cap so that now I looked like any workaday serving girl. Even my own grandmother, I swear, would not have known me.
‘Come, mistress,’ Joan chided. ‘We must do your aunt’s bidding and see how life as a laundry maid suits those tender hands of yours.’
I knew from watching my grandmother that even gentlewomen were not spared from the most menial tasks. Idleness and luxury were sins not to be indulged in, and women’s household labour was seen as God’s holy work. Yet even finding my way round the dark passageways used by the servants of York House was a daunting challenge. It was so great a place, far greater than my familiar home of Loseley, with countless chambers and more than a hundred servants, all dedicated to the smooth running of one household, be it a very great one.
‘Now you are one of us you’d best stay on the right side of the steward, mistress,’ warned Joan, laughing at me, ‘or he will fine you two pence for being late for dinner and the same for prayers.’ I wondered how much servants would be paid. Not enough for fines like those, I was sure. ‘And if you leave a door open, woe betide and a threepenny fine for you into the bargain. All runs on oiled wheels in this household.’
I was surprised, also, to learn that apart from Joan and Mercy almost all the servants were men, since at Loseley my grandmother liked to have women about her.
‘Women servants are not thought much of in London,’ Joan shrugged. ‘Men can make their fortunes if they choose to serve the right lord, though they end in poverty as often. “Young servingmen, old beggars,” so the saying goes.’
I saw, with a little unease, that I had never thought of the lives of those who waited on us before. They had been like part of the wainscoting on the walls, no more than the background to my comfortable home.
I had no further time to ponder on the condition of servants’ lives since Joan bid me accompany her to distant Moor’s Fields where the laundrywomen of London laid out their washing and we had to collect our great tablecloths. I wondered that the servants did not wash them here, as they did at Loseley.
‘The Lord Keeper does not like to show his doings to the world,’ Joan informed me grandly. ‘If tablecloths were laid all across the bushes here, he says, it would seem as if we were running a wash-house!’
To my surprise, despite the streets being as thick with crowds as a dog’s back with fleas, I greatly enjoyed myself.
Walking out dressed as a serving maid was a world away from trying to push your way through on a fine horse, being stared at and importuned by all and sundry. On foot I had time to take it all in without being the target—the costermongers calling, the water vendors, like snails, with their great bottles on their backs, the old dames selling hot codlings, and all manner of tradesmen shouting their wares, from ropes to mend your bed to new chairs for old.
Now that I was down among them, the sounds and the smells of the city seemed not threatening but exciting and exotic. London was said to be the noisiest city in the world, with the c
latter of carts, the cries of the street sellers and the incessant sound of bells. We had a German guest at my uncle’s table who said he had never heard so many bells as were rung in London. The apprentices sometimes ran across the town to ring them for their sport, my father said, and had bets to see who could toll the longest.
Just by the end of the Strand, hard by the maypole that stood there, we saw a milkmaid in the shade of the trees, crying, ‘Milk, pretty maids!’
For a moment I envied the girl her freedom, not having to lead her life for the sake of her family’s honour but having some say in her own choices. Yet perhaps I was being too innocent. Putting bread on the table governed the choices of most, not freedom. She was a tall young woman who smiled much, with a more joyous countenance than I had seen on any other woman about the streets.
‘Aye,’ Joan seemed to be following my thought. ‘Milkmaids come and go from their villages without the say-so of a husband. Not a bad life for a woman! Gossip has it, through luck or witchery they even escape the smallpox. And the Queen herself wasn’t safe from that. Instead one of her ladies, who nursed her through the worst, caught it from her, and ended up as pitted as a pumice-stone! My poor Lady Sidney, so they say, never showed her face again at Court these last forty years.’
As I pondered on the lucklessness of serving the powerful the milkmaid raised her eyes and smiled at Joan. ‘Try my milk, mistress?’
‘We’ve no time, young doxy.’ Joan brushed the girl out of the way.
In sudden sympathy, I delved into the purse I kept round my waist, and handed her a coin.
The girl stared after me, which I found strange until I remembered my appearance. A servant offering charity to another of her rank? No wonder she stared so.
By the time we regained York House, carrying our heavy burden of tablecloths, I longed for my chamber. But Joan was not so easily appeased. ‘Put the cloths away in that chest. Time now to show you how to air the beds.’ She must have seen the droop of my shoulders because she laughed, not unkindly. ‘There are but twenty bedchambers in the Lord Keeper’s house. We shall not make you air them all.’
As she led me past the great portraits and rich hangings of the hall towards the oak staircase, she called for Mercy to come and help us. Already the steward was ordering his underlings to pull out the leaves of the vast table in the Great Hall and unhook the stools from underneath for midday dinner. Some scurried around with square trenchers in their arms, others with great silver jugs of wine and ale.
Joan led us into the first of the bedchambers, a large room a little like my own with carved ceiling, tapestries lining the walls and rich Turkey rugs strewn here and there on the rush floor which was weekly perfumed with rosemary. In the centre was a vast bed, hung with red taffeta fringed in gold.
‘To make sure no dampness remains you must pull it back like this.’ She pulled at the thick brocade bed cover, all lined with white fur, then doubled it back on itself. An insect, tiny and black, jumped out onto her arm.
‘Cursed fleas! Tis the season when they do begin to bother us most.’
Mercy sat on the edge of the bed and felt it sag beneath her. ‘Heigh-ho, Mistress Joan. This bed has suffered some sport!’
Joan winked broadly and pulled off, one after the other, a feather mattress then two more of canvas filled with straw and lastly a mat woven of rushes. Under this a tangle of ropes criss-crossed into holes in the side of the bed timbers like laces in a shoe. To think I had slept on such a bed every night of my life and never thought to look beneath the covers.
‘You pull that end as I pull this, Mercy,’ Joan commanded. ‘When the ropes are tight we put back the mattresses and the bed is firm.’ She winked again at Mercy. ‘Until the next bout loosens them.’
After such warm work I crossed to the window hoping for air.
I glanced out, my eye attracted by a tall figure dressed only in black, his face half hidden by a broad-brimmed hat, standing a few feet below. He leaned on the moss-covered wall, smiling and shaking his head, as if observing a picture that was as full both of sadness as of merriment.
As silently as I could, and slowly, too, so that he would not look up at the sudden movement, I pushed the casement open and leaned out that I might share the object of his amusement.
The rush of warm air hit me. Inside it was cold in this vast warren of rooms and I found myself shivering at the change. Looking down I saw the sight that so amused the stranger below.
Two birds, ring-necked doves. One, the hen, pecked with sullen eye at the narrow strip of grass. The other, the cock, was so desirous of her attention that he puffed up his chest, showing to her all the glory of his rainbow neck, and strutted all around her, calling loudly like any Court gallant seeking the favours of his mistress.
Still she paid him no heed. Losing patience, the strutting bird assayed to climb aboard and have his way with her. But she was too quick for him. In a flutter of disdainful feathers she flew up to the branch of a tree.
The watching gentleman shook his head and laughed aloud. ‘Alas, poor dove,’ said he, as if for all the world the bird could understand him. ‘It was ever thus. The fairer sex ignore us or—crueller by far—enjoy us at their will then tire of us like last year’s glove that has lost its perfume.’ He leaned down towards the cock, conversing as if to an old friend. ‘One consolation. The city is full of pretty birds. Try another and this one will change her mind soon enough!’
I did not know that I had laughed aloud, but the man turned all at once in my direction so that I needs must duck back into the room in case he saw me, hitting my head on the wood of the frame.
My memory of that strange occasion—when I looked back on it-was to hold both laughter and pain.
‘Joan,’ I asked, feigning disinterest in my voice, ‘who is that gentleman in the garden below?’
Joan banged the window shut and looked down at him in disapproval. ‘Gentleman? Master John Donne, the Lord Keeper’s secretary.’ Her words sounded as if they had been dipped in vinegar. ‘Aye, a handsome enough face but also, so they do say, a heretic and a writer of lewd verses.’
Down in the garden Master Donne doffed his hat as if Joan had paid him some extravagant compliment, while I hid in the shadows, smiling.
Outside in the Strand a bell tolled the hour. ‘Eleven of the clock, Mistress Joan,’ Mercy reminded her respectfully. Rank had to be maintained even among servants. ‘Thomas the steward bid me help with the laying of the table.’
Joan sniffed the air, already fragrant with smells from the bakehouse. Soon the dining chamber and the Great Hall would be full of hungry people. ‘Go, then. I need to get my lady’s dress of blue damask from the press and hang it well. Mistress Ann can finish here alone.’ She jerked her head towards the bed. ‘Just put back the linen and pull up the brocade to cover it.’
As she went I tapped my foot in impatience. Pulling up a bed was not such a skilful task as Joan would have me believe. I smoothed the linen, enjoying the feel of the cloth taut beneath my hands until I was satisfied that no wrinkle remained. Then I shook the pillows one by one and placed them neatly at the bed’s head. Lastly I pulled up the silk cover, which was richly worked with all manner of exotic birds.
I was still holding the soft fur lining to my face to remind me of my cat Perkin, left at Loseley, when I gasped. Someone was standing behind me, sliding their arms around my waist.
I tried to move but found I could not. I was held fast.
‘I can think of better uses for a bed than to straighten the covers,’ whispered a voice, as deep and honeyed with invitation as the serpent’s was like to have been in far-off Eden.
Before I could scream or shout I was turned round and I felt lips, hard at first then soft and full, on mine.
Deep in my female core, where until this moment I had felt as calm as the cloister, I sensed a sudden tightening of desire. I should have cried out or fought. Instead, for the blink of an eye, I shuddered and closed my eyes.
Then, f
urious at myself and angrier still at him, I pushed him from me with all my force so that he stumbled and sprawled on the floor.
‘It is a dishonour to you, sir, to take such advantage of a serving maid! Have you no sense of decency to stop you preying on the innocence of one who is not your equal?’
Master Donne picked himself up, having the grace at least to look shamefaced.
‘You are correct indeed,’ the passion in his eyes was now tempered with amusement, ‘but who is it that rebukes me with such fiery justice? An avenging angel, perhaps, sent by the Almighty to put me on the path to righteousness?’
His laughing tone served only to stoke up the flames of my wrath. ‘Jest not, sir. Adding blasphemy to selfishness will hardly win you the forgiveness of the Lord.’
‘And how must I suit for your forgiveness?’
‘By considering what consequence your sudden lust might have on the life of one so far beneath you.’
My aunt or grandmother would certainly blush at such unmaidenly directness, yet I burned still with resentment, and also guilt at my own scandalous response. ‘Is it not a cruel outrage to prey on one who will lose her place if she gives in to your licentiousness? This were no great lady you might woo in your verse with clever conceits and no harm done. Think you that you are Jupiter descending on Io, sir?’ In my indignation I grew a little confused in my references. ‘For the effect on the girl would be far worse than turning her into a cloud.’
He looked closely at me now, grey eyes alight with laughter and also with curiosity. ‘I think you will find it was Jupiter who was the cloud. Io, sadly, was turned into a cow.’
I feared he might be right and this made me more passionate yet in my condemnation.
‘That is hardly to the point. Your conduct has been despicable.’
To my surprise the effect on Master Donne was immediate, akin to a bucket of cold water thrown over an amorous dog. A look of genuine contrition came into his eyes. ‘Unknown mistress, your criticism is more than justified. In the court of Chancery I have been fighting against the powerful taking advantage of the weak, yet find that here I am doing the same myself. I promise I will not err again, no matter how tempting the provocation. Yet might I know the name of my fortuitous rescuer for I would guess you are no true serving maid?’