The House of Allerbrook Read online

  Other errands took her outside the palace. Sometimes, with other ladies, Jane went by river into London to look at merchants’ goods and place orders. It was not a pleasure. The court was crowded enough and at times smelly with a distasteful mingling of body odours and cloying perfumes, but London streets were worse. They were a chaos of thronging people and lofty horsemen who seemed prepared to ride down anyone who got in their way; the streets were littered with horse droppings and human ordure flung from windows, and the stench was like a hand clutching at her throat.

  But there were more and worse unpleasantnesses to come, as Jane discovered, and oddly enough, her carefully acquired skill at music was responsible. Queen Anna quite soon learned from someone, probably Sir Edmund Flaxton, that young Mistress Sweetwater played the virginals well. There came an evening when, in the queen’s private rooms, which contained musical instruments, the queen, with gestures and halting phrases, asked Jane to perform for her.

  The queen took supper apart, with a select group of attendants and courtiers. But the day after Jane’s debut as a musician she was told that she and pretty little Kate Howard had been invited to join the inner circle that evening, as guests. Dorothy was not included, which made her glower.

  Jane was instructed to dress with care, and her tirewoman Lisa helped her put on a tawny damask very like the one which had once been meant for Sybil. “The colour suits you well, madam,” Lisa said.

  A page showed her to the dining chamber, which proved to be a small but luxurious hall, hung with glowing tapestries and lit by innumerable candles. And this evening the king was present, seated beside his wife. For the first time, Jane beheld King Henry VIII of England.

  She was near enough to see and hear him clearly. He was broad chested and strong voiced, jewelled and befurred, a powerfully dominant presence even when he was doing nothing more remarkable than saying good evening to his table companions. He was also, as far as Jane was concerned, heavily jowled and overweight. He reminded her of a bear she had once seen at a fair in Minehead, a lumbering thing with the same small, angry eyes. She pitied the poor queen, if Anna had to endure that hulking body on top of her at night. If Sir Edmund were correct, of course, perhaps she was spared it. In her place, Jane would have been thankful.

  “You are new to the court, are you not?” said a voice in her ear, and she turned to find that her right-hand neighbour was addressing her. It was a man, and to her surprise his voice held a trace of the familiar west country accent. She looked at him with interest. He was not unlike Ralph, except that his hair was dark brown rather than black and he had a beard, which Ralph had not, and a more aquiline nose. He seemed older, too. He was smiling pleasantly at her and she smiled back.

  “Yes, sir, very new. Everything is still very strange. I know hardly anyone yet.”

  “My name is Peter Carew. And you are…?”

  “Jane. Jane Sweetwater. Master Carew, was Sir William Carew of Mohuns Ottery in Devon a relative of yours? He was a friend of my family.”

  “He was indeed, and I know who you are now, though we haven’t met before. My father spoke of the Sweetwaters sometimes. I am Sir William’s youngest son and was one of his biggest problems, until I went off with the French army and vanished,” said Peter Carew cheerfully, and chuckled.

  Across the table Kate Howard called out, “What’s the joke?”

  “My family history,” said Carew, grinning. “I was sent abroad when I was young and eventually disappeared so thoroughly that my parents thought I was dead. When I came back to England and went to see them before joining the court, I gave my mother such a shock that she fainted. Peter, she said, you’re dead! You’ve come back from the grave! And then she sat down on the nearest seat and rolled up her eyes and passed out. You cause trouble even by walking through a door! my father said to me.”

  Jane was working it out. At that dreadful dinner that should have been for Sybil, Sir William Carew had mentioned a son, Peter, and had described him as a pert, forward brat who, when sent out in the world, had got himself demoted from page to stable boy because of misbehaviour. This must be the same Peter Carew. He seemed to be a sufficiently dignified and responsible young gentleman now. He couldn’t really be much older than Ralph. Was it the beard that made him seem so? No, it was something in the man himself. He had gone adventuring; he had seen the world and acquired experience. That was the difference.

  Kate Howard was still listening. “I’m sure,” she said wickedly, “that you could cause all sorts of trouble if you wanted to.”

  “Minx,” said Carew amiably, but kept his attention on Jane. “You haven’t been here long enough to realize, I suppose, but the court’s a strange place just now.”

  “I know,” said Jane in a low voice.

  “I like Queen Anna,” Carew said. “I was with the escort that went to meet her at Calais. But then…” He shook his head and ceased talking, because servants were coming around with dishes and could have overheard. Before supper, Mistress Lowe had warned Jane that some of the deferential persons now recommending a spicy mutton stew were paid to report questionable remarks and opinions to Thomas Cromwell, the king’s most trusted aide.

  As the servers withdrew, Carew, as though he knew what Jane was thinking, remarked, “The man who has gone up to the king and is speaking to him now is Thomas Cromwell. He is a great power in the land.”

  “The heavyset man in the dark clothes?”

  “Yes. Not a fellow to cross, believe me,” said Carew.

  “And the tall man three seats along from the king,” said Kate Howard, leaning across to interrupt, “the one with the long face and the long nose, is my uncle, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk. I don’t like him.”

  “Pert, that’s what you are,” said Carew. Turning back to Jane, he said quietly, “Cromwell isn’t as much in favour as he was. He did more than anyone to organize the marriage, and, well…”

  “Perhaps it will be better when the queen has learned English,” said Jane. “It must be difficult when husband and wife can’t talk to each other properly.” The queen’s lady, Hanna, was seated near her mistress, probably so that she could act as interpreter. She seemed to be doing so now. Somewhat to Jane’s discomfort, she also kept glancing toward Jane herself.

  Carew, who had not noticed, recalled Jane’s attention. “It’s not just that. There are feelings no one can command. As I was saying, I was in the escort that brought Queen Anna from Calais. We got her as far as Rochester, in Kent, and then King Henry arrived, galloping on horseback, dressed as a gentleman but not as a king. He wanted to surprise her, to play the passionate lover. He was as eager as a boy,” said Carew, still speaking low, though no one, surely, thought Jane, could think it treasonable to say that King Henry had romantic leanings.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Cromwell was with him, but the king was shown to her rooms on his own, as though he were just another noble visitor. When he came out…Well, I saw his face, and then I heard him say to Cromwell, I like her not. He didn’t mean her lack of English, Jane. He meant something—much more earthy. I suppose he did his best. He changed into more royal-looking clothes, had himself announced again, this time as the king, and went through the motions of being delighted with her.”

  “I see,” said Jane, remembering what Sir Edmund had told them when she and her companions first arrived.

  “He had to go through with it,” Carew said. “You can’t fetch the daughter of a powerful foreign duke over to England, then turn up your nose and send her back as though she were goods supplied on approval, and didn’t meet your standards. It could cause all kinds of diplomatic repercussions—even destroy alliances. Every king needs his allies, just in case. Besides, it would have been rude and unkind. King Henry can be chivalrous. Well, I think he tried to be,” said Carew, his voice now very cautious. “But not, I fancy, successfully, and however well she learns English—well, I fear he will end up risking the diplomatic upheavals. And, of course, there are
all these absurd religious problems.”

  He glanced at her face and laughed again. “Oh, what is it?” cried Kate Howard, abruptly interrupting her own right-hand neighbour, who had been trying to talk to her about an entertainment which was scheduled for the next day. “Do share the joke!”

  “It’s no joke,” said Carew brusquely, and kept his eyes on Jane’s face. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? The point is that though the king has broken away from Rome, so that we have prayers in English instead of Latin and no more worshipping of idols in what we all now call the popish style, nevertheless, the church in England is still much what it was in other ways. The heresies of Martin Luther are still heresies. The queen has been docile in religious matters and worships just as the king does, but she comes from a Lutheran country. There are people who fear that her influence, if she were ever to acquire any, would be pernicious.”

  “Oh, I see,” said Jane, who didn’t. Ralph’s father, Luke, was said to admire the teachings of a German called Martin Luther, but she had never been clear about what they were.

  “Shhh!” said the man on Peter’s other side. “The king wants to say something.”

  They looked toward the top table, whereupon Jane discovered that she and Kate Howard were the object of the royal attention. King Henry, in fact, was raising a goblet to them both.

  “We have two young ladies here this evening who have not supped in our company before! Welcome, Mistress Kate Howard, Mistress Jane Sweetwater!”

  “Stand up! Stand straight!” hissed Thomas Cromwell, suddenly appearing beside the lower table and making get up at once gestures at Kate and Jane.

  “A toast!” boomed the genial monster in the seat of honour. “A toast to youth and beauty and gracious womanly charm. To Kate Howard, to Jane Sweetwater. Health and long life!”

  Glasses and goblets were raised. The toast was drunk. “Sit down,” muttered Cromwell.

  They sat, but His Majesty hadn’t finished. “Which one of you is Jane Sweetwater?” he demanded, and a prod from Cromwell brought Jane to her feet once more.

  “My queen tells me that you play the virginals well,” rumbled King Henry. “This evening, dear Mistress Sweetwater, you must play once more, for both of us.”

  Kate Howard, in her frivolous way, laughed again. It was a pretty and natural sound, different from the carefully cultivated laughter of many of the court ladies, who used mirth, as often as not, as a way of expressing polite scorn.

  But three seats away from Henry, Kate’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, turned what his niece, accurately enough, had described as his long face and his long nose toward Jane, stared at her with cold dark eyes, and without either speaking or moving, exuded toward her the information that he at least did not wish her well.

  It was an interminable evening. There was dancing immediately after supper, but the king danced only once with his wife. Jane, on the contrary, and to her alarm, was twice led onto the floor by King Henry. He smelt of rancid sweat and sandalwood soap—no doubt meant to disguise the sweat, which it hadn’t—and his big beefy hands were hot. Once more she saw Norfolk looking at her with dislike, although Kate Howard, too, was invited to dance twice. After that, both of them were bidden to accompany the queen to her quarters, where Henry presently joined them, and with Kate to turn the pages of the music for her, Jane was commanded to play.

  Both king and queen applauded and asked for more. It was late before she reached her bed. She found poor Lisa drooping in a seat in the dormitory.

  “I’m sorry, madam,” Lisa said, helping her to undress. “I’m supposed to be a tirewoman but just now a tired woman is what I feel like.”

  “So do I. I hope we can both rest a little tomorrow,” said Jane, much concerned.

  “I heard that the king was there tonight. Did you dance with him?”

  “Yes,” said Jane gloomily. “And played music for him and the queen afterward.”

  A pattern which was to be repeated time after time throughout the weeks that followed, with Henry’s beefy hands growing, it seemed, hotter and more embarrassingly enquiring during every dance, and Henry’s compliments, on her footwork, her music and her appearance, more lavish and disquieting. Until the second of May, when King Henry kissed her.

  I’ve been the biggest fool in Christendom, Sybil told herself as she scrambled out of bed and into her clothes and down the stairs of Stonecrop farmhouse, in order to plunge out into the cold and dark of a February morning to feed the sow and the poultry before breakfast.

  She had thought she was to be a dairymaid, but Stonecrop was short of hands and everyone seemed to do everything, as required. After breakfast she and Alison must muck out the stable and byre, and pile the steamy result on the enormous midden. Every kind of bodily waste, animal or human, went onto that midden, and before very long, Alison had said, they’d be taking the stinking stuff to the fields in baskets on their backs, and spreading it to fertilize the earth before the spring ploughing.

  She seemed to be permanently wet, cold and filthy. At Lynmouth she had worked but indoors, at least. And what was happening to Stephen all this time? She’d thought she didn’t care about him, but now she was constantly wondering how he was, whether he missed her, was looking for her, crying for her…

  I don’t wish he’d never been born, said Sybil to herself, shovelling horse dung. I just wish that I hadn’t.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Fearful Majesty

  1540

  Court life did of course have its good moments. Jane attended a tournament and marvelled at the immense horses and heavily armoured riders as they charged each other, separated by a brightly coloured barrier but reaching across it with lethal-looking lances. She also liked walking in the grounds with the Queen and enjoyed dancing when King Henry wasn’t there. When he was, he never failed to partner her at least once.

  Peter Carew sometimes danced with her, which was much more agreeable, or strolled beside her when queen and courtiers went walking. It was from Peter that she learned that she was not imagining the unfriendly looks she kept receiving from the Duke of Norfolk.

  “He saw before the wedding that this marriage was going to be a catastrophe,” Carew said. “And straightaway he started getting notions about his niece. The gossip is that he’d put her into Henry’s bed himself if he got the chance. As a mistress or even a wife, if Henry manages to get out of this toil he’s in—and he might, from all I hear.”

  Jane had heard the same thing, mainly from Hanna, who sometimes, worriedly, talked to the English ladies.

  “The king sometimes sleeps in her chamber,” Hanna had said, “but all he does is kiss her good-night, and then kiss her good-morning and leave her. On the first night he fumbled about in a way she did not like, but from what she says, it came to naught and he doesn’t do even that now. She says she hopes for children, but, poor soul, she does not know how children are made. We do not tell her, for that is for the King to do. Besides, it is no use for her to know—things—if he will not do his part. We are anxious for her.”

  It seemed to Jane that the few happy occasions would always be overshadowed by things that were not happy at all. The miserable royal marriage was one of these. Her homesickness was another and she was made uncomfortable by Dorothy’s obvious resentment because the king never solicited her hand in dancing. Carew didn’t either. Dorothy, in fact, was a wallflower.

  Matters worsened rapidly when the court moved upstream to London and Whitehall Palace for the May Day celebrations.

  It was Jane’s first experience of the strange mixture of order and chaos which was King Henry’s court on the move. Instructions were exact. All personal belongings must be clearly labelled. Porters would take everything to the barges that were to transport baggage to Whitehall. Only the most important people could take furniture and bedding and hangings; the rest must accept what they found awaiting them at the other end.

  Jane made sure that her goods were carefully labelled, but Lisa panicke
d slightly at the idea of their things being borne away to be piled up in the barge with other hampers and bundles, and prayed aloud that nothing would get lost or broken. However, the journey, though chilly, was accomplished without incident. But when the maids of honour had been shown to their new dormitory and the baggage was brought in, Jane’s biggest hamper wasn’t there.

  “Oh, madam, I knew something would go wrong with your things. I knew it!” wailed Lisa.

  “Well, it isn’t your fault,” Jane said soothingly. “Or mine, either,” she added, frowning. “My brother painted my name on all my hampers and boxes before I left home and I stuck two labels on each piece of luggage, as well. I begged some glue from the Greencloth room. They keep it so that the kitchen staff can mend pots and pans and so on. Look, you can see them on the other things. I can’t understand it.”

  Appealed to, Mistress Lowe said there was a room where unlabelled baggage was put until it was claimed, but when Jane and Lisa followed her directions, with difficulty, since Whitehall was a tangled maze of courtyards and separate buildings, they found that the room was now part of an extended Greencloth office and no one seemed to know where mislaid baggage had been stowed. A little later Peter Carew, finding Lisa and Jane down on the landing stage distractedly peering around, asked what they were about.

  “I wondered if a hamper of mine had been left here by mistake,” Jane said. “It hasn’t been brought to our dormitory.”

  “There’s a room where unidentified luggage is put,” said Carew comfortingly. “Come. I’ll show you.”

  “We’ve been there,” said Jane. “But it’s being used for something else—there are clerks in it.”

  “I don’t mean that one, I mean the new one. It’s been changed. No one ever remembers to tell anyone anything in this court! Details are always going wrong. Come with me.”

  He led them to the right place, and the missing hamper was there. “The labels must have been torn off by accident, madam,” Lisa said. “I saw the way the porters just toss things about. Disgraceful, it is.”