The House of Allerbrook Read online

  Master Corby, she knew, had left his post and gone away, but neither Dr. Spenlove nor Eleanor appeared from anywhere to greet her, and why was there a goshawk in the hall? Francis had set up a perch for her; clearly keeping her there was now a regular thing. There were mutes splashed on the floor amid the rushes. Eleanor would hate that! Where was Eleanor? Timidly, as she pulled her drenched cloak off, she addressed Francis’s back and asked.

  For a moment he didn’t answer. Then he turned and she saw that his jaw was clenched and that his eyes had tears in them. “She’s in the family tomb in St. Anne’s, my dear. She died a week ago. Dr. Spenlove is down in Clicket now, talking to the mason about extra wording to go on the side of the tomb. I meant to write to you today.”

  It had been a chill, nothing more. Over dinner, which Peggy had hastily enlarged for the visitors by frying a lot of sausages and onions and cutting extra bread, Francis explained. They had been buying goods in Dulverton. The weather had turned suddenly treacherous and Eleanor had been both wet and cold when she came home.

  “She’d had a cold just before. She still had a cough. We set out in sunshine—it should have done her good. Instead—she relapsed. She was dead inside a week,” said Francis shortly. It was as though he were angry as well as grieving.

  With obvious sincerity Carew expressed condolences. Jane, both grief-stricken and shocked, shed tears and exclaimed, “Oh, Francis!”

  Francis, however, merely nodded coldly. The hall was warm and the food welcome, but there was a stiff atmosphere around the table which didn’t seem to be connected to Eleanor’s death. When Jane caught Peter Carew’s eye, she saw that he had noticed the awkwardness, as well. In an attempt to lighten the air, she said, “It’s as well I’m here. I can take charge of the house and look after you, Francis.”

  “I was managing very well, thank you,” said Francis, still in a voice which seemed to hold fury as much as sorrow.

  Peter Carew glanced at him thoughtfully, but maintained a tactful silence. After the meal, having been assured that the horses had been groomed and given food, he took his leave and with the grooms, rode off on the last stage of his own journey home to Devon. His home in Mohuns Ottery was still a long way off.

  “He was very kind,” said Jane as she and Francis stood at the door to watch them go. She wished Peter could have stayed. He had felt like a bulwark against whatever it was that was so angering Francis. “He took every care of Lisa and myself and behaved…behaved in a very gentlemanly way. I haven’t told you yet why I’ve come home.”

  “No,” Francis agreed. “And now, my dear sister, send your woman to unpack your belongings and let us sit by the hall fire, and then you can do your explaining. And by all the saints, your excuse had better be good.”

  “You complete fool,” said Francis when he had heard her story. “You unmitigated wantwit! I don’t suppose it will be any use to send you back. Very likely the court wouldn’t have you! I suppose I’ll have to send to Taunton to hire a messenger to let Queen Anna know you’ve reached your home safely. Thank you so much, Jane, for putting me to so much trouble, and for ruining your chances and mine.”

  “Francis, what are you talking about?”

  “You had a unique opportunity, my girl. Rumours get around. They reach us here, far from London though we are. Ralph Palmer is back in the west country now and he brought a tale or two. And there have been others. I went to a fair at Dunster just before Eleanor died. The Luttrells seem to be basing themselves at East Quantoxhead mostly now, but I came across the steward they’ve left at Dunster Castle. He hears from them and they hear plenty of news from the court. He says that the king hasn’t taken to his new queen. And now you tell me he’s had his eyes on you! By the sound of it, you could have become his mistress if you’d gone about it the right way.”

  “But…you wouldn’t want me to do that! Francis, you couldn’t!” It was the last kind of welcome she had expected. It was altogether the wrong response. “You were so angry with Sybil when…”

  “Sybil played the whore with one of my tenants! A man of no importance! You could have had the favour of the king! Think what rewards he might have given you, and your family! In fact, if the Luttrells’ steward was right, the king means to get out of that marriage. Maybe you’d have had a chance to be something more than a mistress, and think what that could do for us!”

  “Yes, I could end up headless!”

  “Nonsense. You would have more sense. I told you that before.”

  “I don’t believe poor Anne Boleyn ever did the things they said she did. She just didn’t have a son, that’s all. No woman can guarantee that!”

  “And many women do have sons! Why shouldn’t you? But you had to panic like a silly milkmaid and run away!”

  “I can’t believe this,” said Jane despairingly. “Francis, you can’t have wanted me to…to…”

  “It could have sent our fortunes soaring. I grieve for Eleanor. I miss her every day and I’ll mourn her decently. But in time I’ll look for another wife, and with you at the king’s side, I might have looked high. I might have been given a valuable appointment, a title! We live in a harsh world, full of competition—didn’t I say something like that to you before? But now, thanks to you, in King Henry’s eyes I’ll be just the brother of the girl who said no. What am I going to do with you?”

  There was a silence, furious and disappointed on Francis’s side, furious and frightened on Jane’s. It went on until the sound of honking and barking outside announced that a new visitor had come. Francis got up and went to the window.

  “Ah. It’s Harry Hudd. He had an errand to Exford and I asked him, while he was about it, to look at a young horse I’d heard of, a very uncommon colour, apparently. Copper’s getting old. I told Harry to buy on my behalf if the animal was sound. Why, yes.” Francis, for the first time since Jane’s return, sounded pleased. “Come and look. There’s a man in Exford who breeds unusual-looking horses. He bought a stallion from Iceland—not a large animal, but he’s been crossing him with bigger mares and this is one of the results. Look at that.”

  Jane joined him at the window. Harry Hudd, as red faced and gap-toothed as ever, was in the farmyard, swearing at the gander while simultaneously dismounting from his Exmoor gelding and grasping the halter of a striking young horse, nearly sixteen hands tall and gleaming black, except for its mane and tail which were silvery white.

  “Harry’s a good reliable man,” Francis said, “though I grant you he’s no beauty.” He paused, and then, as one to whom an interesting new idea has occurred, he said, “He’s been talking for a couple of years of getting married again but the trouble is, he hasn’t been able to find a young woman willing to take him. He wants a young wife. He’s a bit like the king—feels the need of a son.”

  At which moment, Jane became sickeningly aware of two things.

  One was that she wished wholeheartedly that she had journeyed on to Mohuns Ottery with Peter Carew. She had tried not to fall in love with him, but at some point on the ride to Somerset she had given him her heart and he had ridden away with it. She was in love with Peter Carew and more than that; she loved him, which was not the same thing at all, but much bigger. It was the for better for worse love that could hold for a lifetime and face, with sorrow but not dismay, the inevitable end of life, in illness and old age. There was nothing to be done about it. Weirdly, it could well have been easier for her to marry the king than a Carew.

  Marriage to Peter was a dream that could not be realized. It was also a dream that would not die until she did.

  The other was that Francis was very angry with her indeed and that he had seen a way, a most appalling way, of getting his revenge.

  Part Two

  THE SILENT OATH

  1540–1541

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bad Dreams Can Come True

  1540

  It had been a bad dream. Just a bad dream, nothing more. Opening her eyes on a September dawn, Jane wondered how she coul
d possibly have dreamed that she was married to Harry Hudd and living at Rixons Farm, no longer a Sweetwater lady entitled to spend all day on fine embroidery if she chose, but working from daybreak to nightfall and spending the night in the bed of an unprepossessing middle-aged farmer. What a silly fantasy! Of all the absurd…

  She woke up fully and, not for the first time, discovered that the bad dream was real. She really was in Harry Hudd’s lumpy bed and beside her, Harry was just waking up. He opened first one watery blue eye and then the other and grinned his gap-toothed grin. “Ah. Me liddle darling. Just time afore the milkin’, eh?” he said in a throaty tone that she recognized all too well.

  He rolled on top of her, groping beneath the covers. She tried, as she had often tried before, to close her eyes and pretend that this wasn’t Harry but Peter Carew, but her bedfellow, with his animal odour and his pawing and thrusting and complete absence of anything that could be described as tenderness, could not be anyone but Harry.

  She could only lie there and resign herself. Fortunately, he never seemed to expect any kind of response from her, which was just as well, for she couldn’t imagine giving it.

  Francis had arranged it, as she had feared he would, but all the same, Francis was not the only one to blame. Her crime was no crime in most people’s eyes, and at heart he knew it. He might never have gone through with this had it not been for Dorothy. Jane was not cruel by nature, but if Dorothy were ever arrested and taken into the depths of the Tower of London and racked, and Jane had the power to rescue her, she didn’t think she’d use it. Dorothy had blocked her way of escape. Dorothy, as much as—or perhaps more than—Francis, was responsible for this.

  The shock of Dorothy’s behaviour had been all the worse because at first Francis, angry as he was, had refrained from criticizing Jane in front of other members of the household, and she had begun to think that after all, life might settle down.

  She tried to be useful. She missed Eleanor badly, but at least Lisa was allowed to stay as her maid and companion, and otherwise the household was almost as it had been before she left for court. Susie, now married to the groom Tim Snowe and expecting a child, was rearing poultry at his cottage, and had been replaced by Letty, from Clicket. Letty was thin, wiry, hardworking and unlikely to marry. She had had an understanding with a lad in Clicket but he had backed out after smallpox marked her face.

  “I’m the same girl now as I was afore I got pockmarked, but he were too daft to know it. I’ll never give another man the time of day as long as I live,” Letty had said when she first came to Allerbrook. Pockmarked or not, she was a good cook and as handy with a hoe or a pitchfork as any man. Jane and Letty liked each other and worked well together.

  Dr. Spenlove, who had always been Jane’s friend, was still there. Spenlove openly congratulated her on her good sense in fleeing the king’s advances. Spenlove, more than anyone, might have helped to reconcile Francis to his sister’s return home.

  But then Thomas and Mary Stone, who had been away in Kent, reappeared, opened Clicket Hall, announced that Dorothy was coming home from court to be formally betrothed to Ralph Palmer and issued invitations to a celebration dinner in June.

  That betrothal dinner also featured from time to time in Jane’s dreams, or rather nightmares. With the Stones as with his own household, Francis kept up the pretence that all was well between himself and his sister, and when they both received invitations, he accepted them. Jane set off for the party in good spirits.

  They found a houseful of guests at Clicket Hall. Thomas, the host, was well dressed and genial; Mary, though fatter than ever and bulging out of her silk dress, glowed with pride at her daughter’s catch. It promised to be a most happy occasion.

  Except that this time Luke Palmer had been well enough to accompany his son Ralph. Ralph, dark and debonair, was very much the dutiful son, helping his elderly father out of the saddle and offering him an arm into the house. Not that Luke Palmer seemed to need help. He had taken a physician’s advice, adopted a rigorous diet and overcome his gout. He had ridden all the way from Bideford. He clearly approved of Dorothy. But it was Luke Palmer who caused the atmosphere to deteriorate, when he rose to his feet halfway through the feast and made a startling speech.

  In it, he expressed conventional good wishes to the couple, but then declared roundly that if Ralph were ever unfaithful to his charming bride he, Luke, would spread the news of this behaviour from one side of the country to the other and right through the royal court.

  “And that won’t be all, either,” he had added, looking as grimly at his son as though Ralph had already assembled a harem and declared that he meant to install it under his marital roof. “I’ve driven the old Adam out of him before and I will again if I have to. Mistress Dorothy, if you ever need a champion, come to me.”

  Ralph turned beetroot and Dorothy’s face almost matched the crimson damask in which she was once more most unsuitably dressed. Everyone else took refuge in a shattered silence. Such remarks, people commented afterward, were in extremely bad taste and typical of Luke Palmer.

  The normal atmosphere of a betrothal feast did presently show signs of recovery, with Dorothy, now smiling again, as the centre of attention, but there was more embarrassment to come. Triumphant at being betrothed to so handsome a fellow as Ralph, and full of her recent sojourn at court, Dorothy, who had once had so little to say for herself, became talkative.

  There had been plague in London, she said. Her tirewoman Madge had fallen victim to it, though fortunately while she was off duty for a few days, visiting relatives in London. “The outbreak was mainly in the town,” Dorothy said. “But I was glad to come home, though in fact, King Henry has sent the queen and her women to Richmond Palace. To be out of harm’s way, he said,” she added with a knowing smile. “But it’s really to get her out of his way. He’s courting Kate Howard nowadays.”

  “You were privy to what the king was thinking, then?” Ralph said, amused, and winked wickedly at Jane. “Didn’t have his eye on you, did he?”

  Luke didn’t see the wink, but Dorothy did and shot a resentful glance at Jane. Jane, at that moment, felt sorry for her and could almost understand Luke Palmer’s anxiety on his future daughter-in-law’s behalf. To Ralph, clearly, she was no more than the accompaniment to a valuable dowry, which he would sequester for his own use.

  And then Thomas Stone said, “It’s natural for a king to flirt a little. It may not be serious. He tried to flirt with your sister, didn’t he, Francis, which is why she’s with us now. She ran away from him.”

  “Oh, Jane,” said Dorothy, and laughed in that carefully modulated way that court ladies used for putting each other down. Jane felt herself bristling.

  “What do you mean, Dorothy?” her mother asked.

  “I’m sorry. I won’t say any more,” Dorothy replied, holding out her goblet for some more wine.

  “No, come along,” said Francis. “What’s in your mind, Dorothy?”

  Dorothy shook her head, but her eyes gleamed with malice, and Mary Stone, with maddening obtuseness, chose to be persistent. “Dorothy, you can’t say just a little and then stop. You must tell us what you mean.”

  Dorothy looked at Jane. “Well, the king did dance with you once or twice, but he danced with most of the ladies at times. That wasn’t really why you left the court, was it?”

  “Yes, it was,” said Jane, and heard the defensiveness in her own voice. It was she, not Dorothy, who sounded unconvincing.

  “Oh, Jane! You know you kept losing things, and arriving late for this or that occasion and you often said how homesick you were. In the end, Queen Anna decided you’d never be a successful maid of honour and kindly arranged for you to go home. I understood, though,” said Dorothy with spurious sympathy. “I missed my home, too. No one blames you. But it wasn’t anything to do with the king.”

  “I’m afraid it was,” said Jane, as coolly as she could. “I did indeed miss my home but I came back, of my own choice, for the reaso
n I have given. My maid Lisa will bear me out.”

  “Oh, no doubt. I’m sure Lisa is loyal to you, and so she should be. No one would criticize her for that,” said Dorothy sweetly.

  It was clever, Jane thought bitterly. It was fiendishly clever, couched in terms that sounded kind, even though the intention behind it was as unkind as it could possibly get.

  “Well, well,” said Francis calmly. “I daresay, Jane, that you did miss your home, though you’d have got over that if you’d given yourself time. And maybe you were a little overwhelmed by a few compliments from King Henry or invitations to dance. It’s all in the past now. Let us not talk of this anymore. Has anyone else had trouble lately with foxes trying to get at their poultry? There was a dogfox prowling after mine last week, though the dogs and the gander saw him off….”

  They were home again and Jane had retired to her chamber to sit on a stool in her loose bedgown and over-robe while Lisa brushed her hair, when Francis tapped on the door and was admitted. He gave Lisa a dismissive glance and she left them together. Francis sat down on the side of the bed. “So, now we know.”

  “Now we know what?” Jane asked, brushing her long brown hair herself. It gave her hands something to do and stopped them from shaking. Francis looked so very forbidding.

  “The real reason why you left the court. You weren’t afraid of the king! You were ordered home for idleness and incompetence. You seem to have added lies to foolishness.”

  “You believe Dorothy, then?”

  “Why should Dorothy lie? You often said you didn’t want to go to court. I suspect that you simply gave way to your absurd pining for home, failed to do your duties properly and got yourself dismissed—half if not entirely deliberately.”