The Lady of Misrule (22 page)

After a moment, I said, ‘But you're not just your father's son.'

‘No, but I am just my wife's husband.'
And that's why I'm here.

‘Not to me,' I said, as I stood up.

He looked up at me. ‘Where are you going?'

‘Mass.'

He was startled. ‘What, really?'

‘Yes, really,' I said, although actually it was a lie. And I
thought, You've never had to slip by, have you: you and your kind never have to cover your tracks and go unnoticed. Well, you should start learning, I thought, and you can do worse than learn from me.

Despite her agitation at the content of that letter, Jane was generally easier company after the coronation. Perhaps she considered herself on the home stretch, although, in view of what Guildford had said about the practical difficulties of their future life together, I wondered what kind of home she envisaged. Funnily enough, around that time she became quite the little housewife, procuring linen and silks from Mrs Partridge for the stitching of two purses as New Year presents for her sisters. A honeysuckle pattern for Katherine, and gillyflowers for Mary. Occasionally she'd stop reading and would stitch for a while instead. The Partridges could of course send those purses on but I couldn't help feeling that Jane was hoping to be able to hand them over in person. And indeed, a couple of days into her stitching, she broached it: ‘It would be odd to be here for Christmas, wouldn't it.'

Would it? Odder than at any other time?

She didn't look up from her work with a pink silk. ‘I wonder what it's like here at Christmas; I wonder who stays around. The Partridges, do you think?'

I reminded her that Mrs Partridge would be heavily pregnant by then: hardly in a fit state to travel.

‘Oh, yes,' as if she'd forgotten, and then, ‘I do so love
Christmas at home at Bradgate,' and I'd have tried to get her to say more had Goose not come crashing in.

Later that afternoon, I related it to Guildford, flatly, for comic effect: ‘Jane does so love Christmas at Bradgate.'

We were sheltering from drizzle in the entrance to the White Tower; William was nowhere to be seen although he had to be somewhere, watching.

It was mean of me, I knew, to be reporting what Jane had confided and in a manner to make light of it, but then, I was beginning to realise that if I looked at her in a certain way, which meant through someone else's eyes, she did sometimes rather lend herself to being a figure of fun. And anyway, it was too valuable to pass up. It was something of a coup: Jane having expressed a sentiment, and such an unlikely one.

None of which was wasted on Guildford:
‘Does
she now?' Something about Jane that we hadn't known and, better still, something we could never have guessed. He was keen for more: ‘Well, what? What is it that she so loves about Christmas?'

There, though, I was going to have to disappoint him. ‘We didn't get that far,' I admitted.

‘She didn't say?'

Suddenly I was weary. ‘Does she ever?'

In the distance, a roost of starlings rose like a puff of cinders.

‘And you?' he asked me. ‘Are you a lover of Christmas?'

Last Christmas was when Harry had kissed me. It seemed
to me now that not only had he forgotten himself but, drunk in the darkness, had quite possibly forgotten me, too: forgotten who I was, even mistaken me for someone else.

‘I bet you like a party,' Guildford was saying, ‘and I bet there are parties back in Suffolk. I imagine you're quite a dancer. Or would be, if you let yourself go, which you probably don't. Everyone worries too much about what everyone else thinks. But I mean, that's what Twelfthtide's there for, isn't it – out with the old, in with the new.'

‘Yes, but then life just goes on, doesn't it,' I said and, giving up on any pretence of going to Mass, got up and headed back instead to the house.

I was never gone from the room long enough to have attended a Mass but on this occasion there couldn't be even the most bare-faced pretence. Jane, though, didn't seem bothered; I was barely through the doorway before she said, ‘You can be back home by Christmas, if you like,' in a reasonable, cheerful tone which I rarely heard from her unless we were in the company of the Partridges.

I didn't follow, not least because I was busy catching my breath from the climb up the stairs. She was standing at the window, her back to it as if hiding something although there was nothing behind her but sky. ‘You could leave now, if you like.'

What was she talking about?

‘I mean, you don't have to stay, especially now that you're all right

That, I did grasp, although I couldn't believe she'd said it.
‘That wasn't why I came here!' I was appalled. ‘Is that what you think? That I came here because of that?' Because, apart from anything else, how short-sighted would that have been? I was furious with her. ‘What? Would I have had you' – I didn't know how else to put it – ‘delivering the baby?'

She rushed in with ‘I'm sorry, I wasn't thinking.'

Jane, not thinking?
Jane?
Well, maybe that was what too much sewing did for a person. I flung my cloak at the hook. Behind me, she tried again, but cautiously: ‘All I mean is that you can go any time,'
as you know
, despite neither of us ever before having spoken of it. ‘It's just that with Christmas coming …'

One of us needed to say what we meant, so I turned around and put it to her: ‘Is that what you want?'

But she still wouldn't have it, turning away and saying only, ‘It's for you to decide.'

Not until that night, when I thought she was already asleep, did she answer me: ‘Since you ask, I'd prefer if you didn't leave until this is all over.'

I waited in case she had any more to say, but she didn't.

‘Well, then,' I said, ‘I won't.' Because it was no hardship. It wasn't as if I had other plans.

When I told Guildford that Mrs Partridge had taken me on more than several occasions to pick flowers from the Queen's Garden, he was disgruntled that Mr Partridge hadn't favoured him with some similar privilege. He mused, ‘What would be the equivalent, for me?' We were in the mouth of
a passageway at the side of the Lord Lieutenant's house; it was William's turn for the White Tower's entrance. ‘Shouldn't Mr Partridge be taking me across the river to a brothel? Isn't that what Bishop Gardiner used to do for Edward Courtenay?'

Very funny.
‘No, that was what he
didn't
do, although it's what Edward Courtenay did as soon as he was free of him.'

‘Ah, well, bishops,' he was mock-rueful, ‘what are they good for?' Then, ‘For running the country, if this queen has her way.'

Who would you have instead?
I didn't say it but it was there in the air between us, halting any conversation until he salvaged it with a deliberately anodyne enquiry as to the progress of Jane's embroidery. Then, ‘Do
I
get a Christmas present?' He was back to being mischievous. ‘Has she mentioned anything?' He knew she hadn't.

‘Do you want one?'

He dropped back to rest against the wall, in a show of contemplation. ‘Well, if it's made by the hand of my own fair lady wife, then maybe I do.'

‘In which case, I'll put in a good word for you.'

Sharper, he said, ‘I do need some stitching done.'

I gave him a look.

And got one in return. ‘What? She
is
my
wife'

‘She's busy changing the world, remember.'

He sighed, hugely. ‘Well, what about you, then? It's only a lining that's coming away.'

‘William would be your better bet.'

‘No one you're stitching presents for, then?'

I wasn't getting into that.

‘Well, if you're not stitching, and you're not praying – and I know you're not doing that – then what are you doing all day every day in there?'

‘Looking out.'

‘And thinking.'

No, actually, not thinking
: not thinking was what I was emphatically doing. ‘And what do
you
do, all day?'

‘Pester William to play cards, mostly. But he's always writing to his wife. A letter every day: a long, long letter.'

I was incredulous. ‘What does he find to say?'

‘Ah, well, that's for we lesser mortals to wonder.' He heaved himself off the wall to press one foot hard on to the ground: cramp, or pins and needles. ‘Then again, perhaps not. Because perhaps you've been in love, Elizabeth; have you?' He cocked his head, appraising me. ‘Anyone you have your eye on? Any suitable Suffolk sorts? Or,' he smirked, ‘anyone
un
suitable? Any – I don't know – stablehands?'

‘No, but how about you? Any stablehands
you
have
your
eye on?'

‘Elizabeth,' he warned.
You could die for that.
He peered into the distance as if to check on William. ‘Well, anyway, you've got all that to come,' he said, ‘because you'll be marrying for love, won't you.'

‘Which is a stupid thing to do, according to you.'

‘No,
for me.'
He turned back around. ‘For someone such as me, coming from a family such as mine.'

I couldn't let that pass. ‘And what do you know about
my
family?'

Hands up. ‘Good Catholic family, and well connected: must be, to have got you here.'

I put him straight: ‘I volunteered, and let me tell you that I didn't have a lot of competition.'

He was surprised. ‘You volunteered for this? Why?'

Questions, questions, questions. ‘Because I thought I might meet my prince.'

Another of those searching looks of his. ‘You want a prince?'

‘No, Guildford,' I said, moving off past him. ‘Actually, what I want is some peace and quiet.'

I didn't see him every day, nor even most days, because sometimes the cold was too much for me or he himself was too much, and the day after we'd stood discussing Jane's embroidery was one of those times, although it was my mistake to think it would be easier to stay put. Jane was pleased with her progress on the honeysuckle bag, and that afternoon she pressed on with it. I wasn't bothered when she was reading or writing but, inexplicably, her embroidering drove me to distraction. I could never have joined her in her reading and writing, but I could well have joined her in the needlework. She'd offered – several times – to share her silks with me, but the silks weren't the half of it because I also lacked her eye for detail, her steady hand, her patience. I didn't want to show myself up. Not that I said so. I just declined politely, and she could think what she liked.

That particular November afternoon was when she nodded towards the Susanna tapestry and, apropos of nothing, pronounced, ‘Apocryphal.'

I got the impression this was supposed to be helpful.

What?

‘Means it didn't really happen. It's just a story.'

Oh, what, unlike the rest?

Anyway, how did she – or anyone – know? They'd read it somewhere in a book, but who'd written the book and how had the writer known? And the funny thing was – and I nearly said it to her – that Susanna was one story that I could believe. Those two old men, the respected elders:
You either let us do whatever we want to you or we tell everyone you have a lover, and just who, girly, do you think they'll listen to?

And, actually, while we were on the subject, there was something I'd often wondered: ‘Why don't you ever try to convert me?'

I'd thrown it at her from nowhere but she didn't so much as glance up to reply, ‘Well, if I took the time to try to convert everyone

But I wasn't everyone. And I was right there under her nose. Right there, day after day, week after week. ‘But I've started going to Mass again,' I said, at which she did glance up, but sceptical, which infuriated me. ‘I have!'

She was already back at her stitching. ‘Did I say you haven't?'

‘Well, why don't you ever try to stop me?'

She said nothing, just sat there stitching.

‘Why don't you ever really talk to me?'

‘We're in prison,' she said. ‘Not at a party.'

‘But isn't that all the more reason we should talk? Stuck in here like this, just the two of us?'

‘Talk about what?' A pulling tight of a thread gave her an instant in which to frown up at me, but I couldn't read it: puzzlement? Disapproval? Challenge?

How could we ever know what we might have in common if we didn't talk? And anyway, I thought, what does anyone ever talk about? What did Guildford and I talk about? ‘Just … anything,' I ended up saying, pathetically.

Suddenly she surprised me, laying her embroidery down in her lap and saying in the manner of offering me something, ‘Katherine Parr would've converted you.'

As a conversation opener, it left me at a loss. Katherine Parr? The one who'd survived the old King.

She warmed to her theme, literally: sitting back, stretching her legs, her feet closer to the fire. ‘I lived with her for a while at Chelsea and, I tell you, she would've converted you. She wrote and published a whole book but she still managed to win everyone over, convert everyone she came across.'

‘How?'

That had her shrugging, although taking some pleasure in it, making light of her own cluelessness: if she knew, said that shrug, then she'd be doing it, wouldn't she. ‘She was just …' she came back with, ‘lovely.'

‘She won
you
over,' I said.

‘Oh, no,' she crossed her ankles. ‘She didn't have to; I was
raised Protestant, remember. My father likes to think of himself as a man of ideas,' it was obvious she didn't concur, ‘although my mother's more of a horsewoman. In her view, life's for living,' which she pronounced to make clear that she was quoting, and raised her eyebrows as if we agreed that was self-evidently absurd. ‘So, no,' she said, ‘the Dowager Queen didn't have to win me over.'