The Lady and the Poet (16 page)

‘And the moon also. She is a veritable angel of beauty.’

I knew, given my sister’s implication of the other night that I should look modestly down and keep silent. Yet it angered me that Master Donne, whose mind was clear and sharp, should come up with so empty and conventional a compliment.

‘Indeed?’ I replied. ‘Yet I have always thought angels to be dull beings, all goodness and light and standing around forever singing and waiting to do the Lord’s bidding.’

‘Dull?’ he repeated, laughter rippling through his voice. ‘Even proud Lucifer, who thought to rival Almighty God in His magnificence? Was he dull also?’

‘Lucifer above all.’ I looked him in the eye, recalling the psalm he had sent me. ‘For anyone with so much pride as Lucifer would be interested in none but themselves.’

‘Ann!’ The voice that cut through Master Donne’s laughter like the crack of a whip was my father’s. I had not known he was standing so near me.

My father is well known for his eruptions of choler, which often come like thunder exploding in a calm blue sky. ‘How can you speak in that way of heavenly matters! I hope these are not the ways you have been learning in my sister’s house?’

For answer I dropped a curtsey, relieved that he was simply angry at my levity and not whom I addressed it to. When I rose back to my feet I saw that I was now taller than my father by almost two inches.

‘No, Father, I have met in my aunt and uncle’s home nothing but dutiful respect to God our Maker.’

‘Good. Now show some respect to your earthly parent and bring me the black cloak from my chamber. It may be chill on the water.’

‘I will, Father. With all my heart I would not wish you to take a chill on such a day as this. Mayhap a fur-lined coverlet would warm you the better?’

He listened to my tender tone with suspicion. ‘Thank you, Ann. I am not a dotard yet.’

My aunt had come to the water’s edge to wish him luck. ‘Farewell, brother. Send my good wishes to Her Majesty.’

The Lord Keeper had been summoned to Greenwich on the Queen’s business also and he accompanied us downriver on his barge, a wherry being too frail a craft, and the river water likely to besmirch our fine clothes.

We talked little on the journey and as we rowed eastwards I occupied myself with looking at the busy river banks where builders, like little ants, threw up houses so fast that you half expected one to have risen on the way home that had not been there on your outwards journey.

The tide was with us, and it was less than an hour before we reached the Queen’s favourite palace.

We moored by the great watergate and walked up the steps through the garden and thence to a courtyard where many people crowded together, some holding petitions, all dressed in their richest outfits. Some had come to seek favours or preferments, to ask for lands to be restored, for benefices if they were clergy, or leniency if their debts threatened to engulf their manor houses. Others wanted justice of the courts.

At last it was our turn to see the Queen.

This time I knew to look out for the ladies who waited on her, asking myself what idle gossip or vicious chatter they would have to share this time. But today they were silent and looked around disdainfully. Any one of them could have helped the crowd of petitioners but none would do so except for her own reward or advancement.

The throng began to ease forward, like a jewelled sea, pulled onwards by the lure of Majesty, when I heard a whisper from one of the ladies. ‘I gather
he
is going to arrive for the dubbing ceremony.’

I needed not to ask whom it was they were discussing. There was but one ‘he’ in this court: the dazzling and noble Earl of Essex.

As we neared the Privy Chamber I wondered if, this time, the Queen would be in a better temper. No doubt that, too, depended on her youthful admirer.

It was a scene of vast magnificence. All around us the bright colours of the courtiers’ clothes were framed against even richer tapestries, their costly jewels all lit up in the flickering glow of a thousand candles. I breathed in the pungent odours of spices and pomander, always redolent of the Court to me.

‘Ann!’ The sound of my father’s sharp voice followed by the royal fanfare woke me from my reverie. ‘Remember where you are. Here comes Her Majesty!’

And there before me was Queen Elizabeth.

She looked a different woman on this occasion, regal and as dignified as a statue, her face stark under its mask of ceruse, her lips and cheeks reddened with cochineal. Her gown, not filched this time from her lady in waiting, was the finest I had ever seen, covered in sapphires and emeralds, and vast pearls sewn into the sweeping neckline, set off by more rings, necklets and gemstones than I had ever seen on any lady, her sleeves legs of mutton a whole foot wide, her ruff so large it stood up like an open fan all round her neck.

Yet it was the eyes that held you, pale and lidless, almost like those of the toads that stared up from our lily pads at Loseley, all-seeing, with the veriest touch of sinister threat. I could not banish the thought of how I would not wish to be Lady Mary Howard, nor any lady who crossed the Queen in love.

And yet, until I saw Elizabeth in her Court, with all its grandeur and her ladies round her, I knew not the meaning of the word Majesty. It draped around the Queen like a jewelled mantle and I knew that even without her finery, Elizabeth would still be a Queen.

She stopped her procession when she saw my father and lightly touched his shoulder.

‘You have been diligent in my service, George More,’ she smiled. ‘I am told you speak more than any other in the house of Parliament, yea, and sit on more committees. I thank you for your work, and your good service to me in your county of Surrey and while I dispense the
title but sparingly I know it will content my friend your father that though he still lives you also should carry the title of knight.’

Her attendants waited for her to move on yet she leaned suddenly closer to my father and spoke with a new wistfulness in her voice. ‘And I well remember how, many years ago, when I was but a green girl, you would act as a messenger between myself and the Earl of Leicester.’

The Queen’s hawk eyes softened at the memory of her once and greatest love.

‘I did, Ma’am,’ my father gently replied. ‘You once sent him a diamond ring by my good offices. From your own finger.’

‘So did I.’ She seemed for an instant back in those heady times of her youth. ‘And you rode to him through rain as heavy as the Flood and told him that his Queen would do as the weather, nothing but weep, until she saw him again.’

They stood for a moment in a bubble of the past, a time when life even for the Queen had seemed simpler and so much more full of promise.

Watching them silently I saw my father in a new light. Not the fussy, narrow man he had become, but the once gallant deliverer of passionate messages of love.

The Queen moved on with her train of ladies behind her.

‘And now it is to the Earl of Essex that she sends her diamond rings,’ my father murmured sadly. ‘Let us hope he proves to be worthy of her.’

‘Well done,
Sir
George.’ The Lord Keeper, who had remained at our side, shook his hand. I suspect he understood my father well, that to some men titles were as a shifting breeze compared with godliness or honour. But to others, my father being in their number, a knighthood was a prize indeed.

As the Lord Keeper spoke the crowd around us began suddenly to part, as if for the Israelites in the Red Sea.

A noble-looking man with dark flowing hair, glowing eyes and a square-cut red beard, his clothes surprisingly disarrayed for one of his rank, strode past us.

‘My Lord of Essex,’ bowed the Lord Keeper.

‘Good Sir Thomas!’ He shook the Lord Keeper’s hand warmly, his
eyes lighting up with what seemed real affection and I could see what it was about this man that moved people. There was an eagerness and directness in his manner as if, when he held fast your hand, nothing else in God’s universe existed save you and he.

Behind us, out of the corner of my eye, I saw that the Queen too had stopped, waiting to feel the beam of his bright sun.

And then a strange occurrence happened. He did not shine upon her. He turned instead to me. ‘Tell me, who is this new star of loveliness who shines so brilliant in our dull firmament?’

‘Mistress Ann More, my lord,’ explained the Lord Keeper, anxiety beginning to agitate his manner. ‘Daughter to Sir George More, newly knighted by Her Majesty.’

I would wager an angel that he knew she was watching, that indeed this whole performance was for her benefit, not mine. I could have been a ship’s timber arrayed in cinnamon satin and he would have paid me the same extravagant compliment.

The Queen turned on her heel and I could hear the angry swish of her robes as she hastened from the chamber, her ladies scurrying behind her.

I bit my lip, and said naught, consumed with gratitude that I had escaped a place at Court, where, innocent though I might be, I would be pulled willy-nilly into the muddied waters of others’ deceptions.

‘Come,’ my father took hold of my arm, as relieved as I that the Earl had moved on, ‘let us return to York House where they await us with much feasting.’

On the barge once more, alone, I turned to him. ‘Father, is it true the Earl could succeed the Queen when finally her time arrives?’

My father looked suddenly afraid and glanced behind him. ‘Ann! Such talk is treason! Besides, no matter what the Earl may wish himself, there are a dozen more deserving claimants than he and the likeliest, sorry to say, since my own father assisted with her prosecution, is the son of Mary of Scots, King James of Scotland. Yet the Queen will never name her heir. She knows full well that when she does her sun will set and all will turn towards the new light in the east. Elizabeth, great Queen though she is, would be abandoned at the end. It is the way of the world.’

There was a freezing wind on the river. As we rowed away from
Greenwich the sun did indeed set, suffusing the whole of London with a red glow. On any other day this would have seemed to me a glory of nature, something to celebrate in all its burnished beauty, but after my father’s speech it seemed to betoken the end of an era.

My father tucked my hand into his arm. ‘So, Ann, what think you of my ennoblement? You see what an honourable tree it is you spring from? Knights going back through three generations. And word comes to me that your sister Margaret’s husband Grymes will be knighted before long. Whether that young man Manners stumps up or not, we must soon think of a husband for you, a man who can match our honour with his own.’

I looked away and said nothing.

He was silent as we travelled back upriver, leaving me to my thoughts and the sound of the oarsmen rhythmically rowing. As the towers and turrets of York House approached he dropped his voice. ‘There is much company near your age residing in York House is there not, Daughter? Young Francis, his betrothed, Mary, the younger Sir Thomas and also his lady?’

‘Yes, Father, it is a busy house indeed.’

‘Yet, Ann,’ he hesitated and fixed me with his small grey eyes, which still shone as brightly as if he were a boy, instead of a man of sixty, ‘there is one whose company I would fain you shun, since it befits not an innocent maiden. Master John Donne. Your uncle thinks highly of him yet I came across some verse of his being handed round the Inns of Court and laughed over by its inmates like naughty schoolboys. It seemed to be both lewd and, even worse, satirical.’

I bit my lip, hoping it was not the poem about his mistress going to bed.

‘I wish your uncle had not appointed him. He has a reputation that I like not.’ He shook his head. ‘Women are such fragile vessels. Even the Queen’s head is softened by pretty words and a handsome leg.’

‘Not I, Father.’ I put my chin up and faced him. ‘I am no fragile vessel. Handsome legs hold no sway with me.’

He glanced sharply at me. ‘You are a hard book to read, Ann.’

I looked down, heartily glad of it. Especially since I knew not myself what the pages said. Or what my future would be.

We had reached the steps.

My aunt had caused the servants to line the path from the river to the house and when we alighted from the barge they cheered.

My father pretended to be humbled by such a fanfare for his knighthood, but I saw that secretly he was much pleased.

When we had greeted the servants I saw that my grandmother also waited inside the entrance of the Great Hall.

She smiled at her son. ‘Greetings, Sir George.’

‘And my father, Sir William? Is he not here to share our joy?’ I could hear the regret at his father’s absence in my father’s voice. It was as if he were once again a small boy wishing approval for the bow and arrow he had just fashioned out of twigs.

‘He is suffering from an ague. His humour is a phlegmatic one, yet today he is hot and dry as if it were of red choler.’ There was concern today beneath her briskness. ‘Ann, there is a great garden here at York House and though you must be cold from your time on the river, I would thank you mightily for finding me some sorrel or purslane to soothe his aches. The servants are city people and would not recognize purslane if it were worth a bag of coins.’

‘I will go straightway and if I can find it bring it to your chamber.’

‘Thank you, child. If you cannot find it, I know none can.’

I wrapped my cloak closely around me for the wind was sharp now that the sun had sunk beneath the horizon.

Herbs, if any were to be found, would be grown in the knot garden running down to the river on the left side of the house. Often when I walked there I caught sight of the gardener and his boy, but today the hour was too advanced.

The knot garden in February was a desolate place, almost empty apart from the small walls of hedge that divided up its sections. I saw no sign of sorrel. Trying to forget the bone-chilling cold I hunted in every section for its tall leaves, like to those of the dock plant which children rubbed upon their skin when they suffered the sting of a nettle, but none had survived. I was about to give up when I spied a pale and creeping plant with thick stems that snaked along the ground. I knelt down to inspect it further and noticed a tiny parcel of black seeds, no bigger than a tooth. It was, I found, intertwined with another plant, the other with wirier stems, that crept along by its side as if they were old friends who could not be parted.