The Winchester Goose: At the Court of Henry VIII Page 12

  It is as I am casting my eye about the room, stooping to peer under stools, lifting and shaking cushions, that Jane Rochford enters the chamber. She stops dead in her tracks when she sees me. “What are you doing here? You should be taking the air with the others.”

  Her face is icy cold, making me feel I have violated her domain. I bob a curtsey. “The Queen bid me search for her emerald ring.”

  With an impatient huff Jane crosses the room to the Queen’s jewel casket, fumbles for her key, unlocks it and opens the lid. She waves the great square ring beneath my nose. “Is this what you seek, you foolish girl? Do you expect me to believe the Queen wishes you to fetch this, a priceless jewel?”

  “N-not fetch it, just discover its whereabouts. I will inform her majesty that it is safe.”

  Jane locks it into the casket again and I make my escape, hurry back to where I last saw the Queen, my feet soundless on the stone floor. As I reach the far end of the corridor, close by the chapel, a man approaches and I stand by to let him pass, keeping my eyes lowered.

  It is Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, closely followed by his servant. He makes to pass right by but, to my surprise, he stops suddenly and speaks my name. “Mistress Bourne?”

  I bob a curtsey, keeping my chin lowered, not daring to meet his eye. “I am Mistress Greywater now.” I am greatly daring to correct so great a personage as Stephen Gardiner but I keep my sight on the hem of his gown as is fitting.

  “Of course, of course. I was forgetting. Tell me, how is your sister? Evelyn, is her name?”

  Totally astonished that he has knowledge of either one of us I raise my eyes to his, my mouth suddenly void of moisture. “I – we, I do not know, Your Grace. She is missing.”

  “And that fellow she married, a merry rogue. Francis Wareham. Do you know his whereabouts?”

  “I do not, Sir.” For all his friendly manner his eyes are penetrating and the answer he makes is vague.

  “No matter,” he says, preparing to move away. “Pray, when you see them, give them my regards.”

  I curtsey again and as I rise, I notice the bulbous eyes of his servant on me, his eyebrow raised quizzically as he seems to burrow into my soul. For a moment I wonder where I have seen him before, and in no small puzzlement I watch him and his master walk along the corridor. The Bishop’s gait is curiously soft and stealthy for so great a man. He looks to be a great keeper, and seeker, of secrets. What on earth can he want with Eve or Francis? I wonder as I hurry off in search of the Queen.

  It is not until much later, when I am preparing for bed, that I realise that Stephen Gardiner’s man is the very same I saw whispering in the gardens with the Queen’s secretary at Collyweston.

  By the time we return to Hampton Court, the summer is sliding into decay and my morning megrim is beginning to subside. The leaves along the wayside are yellowing now and the grass in the meadows is tall and lank. We ride past men and women labouring to get the harvest in before the seasons turn. They turn to watch us as the lively wind snatches at our cloaks and sends the curtains on the ladies’ litter bellying in the breeze. At each hamlet the peasants appear at the roadside, and for all their hardship, they call out with good wishes to the King and his pretty bride.

  His rose without a thorn.

  Joan Toogood

  She is slow to wake up. When I try to rouse her, her head lolls and her moth opens, but she does not speak. She sprawls on my mattress, her hair streaming across the pillow, her face bone white, her eyes staring at nothing.

  Sybil leans over, puts her nose an inch from the girl’s mouth. “She’s breathing, Joanie.”

  “I know that.” I push her away so I can get a better look. Against the coarseness of the sheets she is like an angel or a nun fallen among whores. What in God’s Heaven am I going to do with her? I wonder. I can’t just let her wander off alone for it is clear she will fall straight into danger.

  Francis’ stricken body floats before my eyes and I sink sharp teeth into my lower lip to leaven the pain in my heart as I ponder what to do with his wife. I know a wherryman who, for a favour or two, would take her upriver and put her back among her own kind, but I fear that as soon as she regains her wits she will start blabbing and have the justices down upon me. And there ain’t a hope that anyone will believe my word against the word of a woman like her. No. It will be better if I keep her comfortable until such time as she can tell me why she did it. Once I know her reasons I can decide what’s best to do.

  Betsy curls her hair, pinches her cheeks and takes herself off to work, but I lack both the heart and the courage to go. Sybil curls up in the corner with a blanket and I sleep, half on and half off the bed with M’lady curled like a cat beside me. She snores like a sailor and does not wake for all my prodding, so I lie wide-awake and watch the pitch-dark ceiling lighten with the rising of the sun.

  It is around dawn when I become aware of her sliding off the bed and fumbling at the walls. I rub the sleep from my eyes and go to her, take her by her narrow shoulders and guide her back to the bed. She is unresisting, her mouth open, her lips moist, and as I tuck the covers beneath her chin again, I see there are tears glistening on her cheeks.

  “There, there, my dear,” I murmur as I wipe a calloused finger across her smooth skin. “Go back t’ sleep now. Things will look better in the mornin’.”

  But in the harsh light of day, nothing looks better. Everything is as bad as it was before. Betsy has returned with a torn frock and a pocket full of coins, and I do my best to persuade Sybil to run down to the cook-shop. She can’t spend the rest of her days cooped up in here, hiding from the world. She has to learn that we must each play a part.

  I prod her cruelly over the threshold and watch her progress tardily down the stairs and across the yard. Then I turn back inside where M’lady still snores, drool trickling from her open mouth onto the mattress.

  It is the smell of hot pie that rouses her. She stirs on the bed and I go to her, smile my best smile as if she is a visitor as I haul her into a sitting position. To my surprise she smiles crookedly back at me, but the faraway look is still in her eye.

  She is sort of vague and daft and puts me in mind of a girl I once knew that was hit by a runaway horse. I am sure she was not like that before. When I hold out half a meat pie she all but snatches it and begins to stuff it into her mouth, although it’s hot enough to raise blisters. I offer her a cup of ale to take the heat away.

  Betsy yawns and stretches, tired from her night, and I know she will want the bed for an hour or two. Sybil will have to give up her stool for a bit and shift herself to tidy this place up. It’s not fit for scullions let alone our present company.

  Francis’ wife watches my every move, her blank eyes rarely blinking. I am reluctant to leave her in the care of my sisters but I have things to do, places to go. I need to wander the streets and discover if Francis has been missed or even discovered on his lonely, night time journey down river.

  “Come, Betsy needs her beauty sleep,” I say and, taking her by the hand, I begin to tug her off the bed to settle her on the stool close by. As she shifts I notice she has wet herself, her petticoats are soaked, the mattress too.

  “Oh, charmin’.” Betsy stands, hands on hips, and surveys the ruined bed. “Dead man’s gore on one side o’ the mattress and piss on the other.”

  I shove her with a rough hand. “It ain’t the first time you’ve slept in a pissed bed,” I say. Then, after untying M’lady’s petticoats and hanging them over the balcony to dry in the sun, I take a piece of wet cloth and begin to wash her nether regions. She jumps at the sensation of the cold water.

  She is made from a different mould to me. Her legs are long and slim and her quaint is small and neat, while my body is fleshy and full and makes hers look like that of a child. When I am done, I retie her skirt and lace up her bodice. She can do without a kirtle for the morning. Then I sit her down, cup her cheek and give her a cheery smile in farewell.

  The more time
I spend with her, the more confused I am as to how she came to do the terrible thing she did. Her attack on Francis was fierce and fatal yet the child before me is fragile, in both mind and body, and I can only surmise that it must have been jealousy of me that drove her to such frenzied passion. I feel a twinge of guilt at that, knowing I am as much to blame as she.

  Since I trust neither sister to watch her as well as I do, I resort to tying her to the bedstead with one of Betsy’s ribbons. “You wait there, Sweet’eart, 'til Joanie gets back,” I say and she gapes at me. All the time I am gathering my shawl and slippin’ a couple of coins into my pocket, I feel her eyes upon me.

  The sun is brave this morning. I wave to Bertha as I pass her door, hoping she will not stop me to ask about my curious visitor. Her husband is, as ever, snoozing on the doorstep, his chin on his chest, oblivious to the sober world buzzing around him. Bertha ceases her sweeping to draw her hand across her forehead and sends me a cheery wave in reply. I hurry by, thankful that she hasn’t the time to stop.

  The market place is heaving. Blind Tim is in his usual place, making his scrawny dog dance on its back legs for a few pennies. I watch for a few minutes. It’s a mystery to me how he can tell if the mutt is dancing or has run off with the butcher’s bitch. As I move on, I call out ‘good day’ to him and he gapes in the direction of my voice and raises a hand.

  Nearby, a fellow calls his wares and, suddenly ravenous, I buy another pie and sink my teeth into mutton and gravy as I continue on my way. No sooner have I wiped m’ lips clean than I bump into Thomas Bluer, who has need of me. For the exchange of a few pennies he takes his pleasure in an alleyway.

  I look over his shoulder to where Winchester Palace glistens in the sunshine, like a star that has had the misfortune to fall into a pile of turds. When Thomas is done and paid his due, I move on, cheered to have a couple more coins clinking in my purse. Happily, it is a busy morning and I add to them further when I come upon a printer’s boy in want of company. This one wants me on me knees and I grovel before him in the shadow of the palace wall and loosen his piece. I come away from him, wiping my chin and mentally counting my wealth.

  With the money Francis left on the dresser and the little Betsy and I have earned since, perhaps the winter will not be so hard after all. I decide I can go home early and venture out again at nightfall when the more affluent fellows begin to trickle over the bridge.

  On my way home I stop off and buy half a cooked goose and some fresh baked bread, confident that I can make more coin later. Feeling more positive than I have since the moment my eyes fell upon poor, dead Francis, I walk toward home. But as I turn into the alley alongside The Cock’s Inn, I hear a screaming and hollering the like you’ve never heard. I wrench up my skirts and sprint up the stairs, flinging the goose on the table and slamming the door behind me. “What in God’s holy acre is goin’ on?”

  Betsy is leaning over the bed, hollering at M’lady, who in turn is wailing fit to burst, her mouth squared, her eyes spoutin’ like a gargoyle in a rainstorm. As I slam the door, she turns her head, her face a drama of fear. To my great surprise she opens her arms to me.

  I plump onto the mattress and she falls sobbing against my chest, her pretty cheeks sinking against my motherliness as my arms slide instinctively about her. “There, there, my dear,” I croon. “Joanie’s back now, there, there … cease yer blubberin’.”

  That evening, instead of venturing out to turn tricks with Betsy, I sit at M’lady’s bedside and feed her strips of goose from my fingers. She has taken a shine to me and every time I leave her side, her eyes follow me about the room as if I hold the answers to all her unasked questions.

  Her hair is snarled and tangled, damp with tears, and there are still splashes of dear Francis’ blood on her bodice. I take up Betsy’s comb and begin to loosen her hair. It is thick and long, the colour of honey, and it feels like satin compared with my own coarse curls. The comb has few teeth but I go slowly, taking a tress at a time and working my way from bottom to top so it pulls less.

  She sits cross-legged on the mattress where Francis died and sways gently, crooning a tune I have never heard before. I wind a strand of hair about my finger, making the perfect curl before laying it gently across her shoulder.

  “You’ve gone soft, you 'ave.” Across the room, by the hearth, Sybil is watching us, her own hair in haloed disarray, a sneer of disapproval on her lips. “She ain’t a doll, Joanie. She ain’t yours t’ keep. You will 'ave to send her back.”

  “Back to what? The gallows?”

  Sybil stands up, slams the bowl of peas she has been shelling onto the table. “ 'ave you ever heard her speak? She ain’t said a word so far, Joanie. I don’t think she can talk. I reckon that bang on the 'ead done somethin’ to 'er. So she won’t be confessin’ nothin’.”

  “She could lead them back here to us or, if they do suspect her and you are right and she can’t talk, how will she defend herself? Would you just let her hang? Does she look like a villain to you? Does she?”

  “'Tis not our problem.”

  I look at Sybil for a long time, remembering how I have kept her from harm, worked twice as hard just to keep her from having to go back to whoring until she is ready. I know the dangers out there. I understand her fears and am happy to tide her over for a bit. The shame of it is, she is as ungenerous as a tithe-taker and don’t see that charity should work both ways.

  Although it is August, I am suddenly chilled. I rise slowly from the bed and regard her sadly for a few moments before I move toward the hearth, hold my hand out to the meagre flame.

  “I think, Sybil, that my problems should be yours an’ all. I can’t find it in my heart to send Francis’ wife back to face God knows what. He was the closest thing any of us have had to a husband and I will respect him as such 'til the day I die.”

  She fidgets on her stool, not meeting me eye, but I fix her with mine and make my words as strong as I can. “Francis would expect me to have a care for her and have a care I will. You, Sybil, owe it to me to do likewise … unless you’d care to make your own way in the world, of course.”

  I turn me back again as she begins to snivel. Her grizzling has always got my back up but now, with things the way they are, I am forced to trust her. Yet of all the women I know, Sybil is the one I trust the least. She’s no Judas but she ain’t too sharp neither and her loose lips have led us all into trouble more’n once.

  But it is growing late and I’ve had enough of the day. Betsy will be out for hours yet and the fire is slumping in the grate but instead of feeding it, I leave it to die out and crawl into bed. Sybil makes do with the pile of bedding in the corner, grumbling like an empty belly as she tries to get comfortable.

  I have no choice but to settle down with M’lady for a second endless night. I undo my bodice, step out of my skirt and slide in beneath the blanket beside her. She snuggles against me for warmth and falls asleep right off, while I lay wide-eyed, listening to her breathing, soft and regular. My right arm is across her shoulder, my fingers playing with a silken curl as I wrack my brains to remember her name.

  Isabella Greywater - November 1541

  “Come and dance, Belle.” Katherine holds out her hand, a half pout on her face, her cheeks still flushed from the last dance. I cannot refuse a request from the Queen so I put down my sewing and take her hand.

  Katherine and all her ladies are bored, there have been no visitors all day and outside the weather is relentless. Grey November clouds hang over the palace and, every so often, they let loose a deluge of rain to rattle against the windows.

  The King is unwell. No one has seen him for several days and since the men of his household attend him, we are starved of male company. Forced to entertain ourselves, we sew and gossip and now, it seems, we must dance together also.

  The older women gather close to the hearth, keeping a watchful eye on the younger girls clustered around the Queen at the window seat. Elizabeth Fitzgerald picks up her lute again and Mary Nor
ris joins her in a song while Anne partners Dorothy. My heart is heavy as I attempt to turn and hop as gracefully as my royal partner and I can barely keep time with the music.

  Eve should be here, not me. She is the one who loves to dance; her step is light, her carriage graceful. Dancing always makes me feel like a bear, lumbering and clumsy, and now that nausea is making my head swim, I am more ungainly than ever.

  Katherine, on the other hand, is as light and graceful as a nymph, her fair hair bouncing on her shoulders, her face pink with exertion. Her perspiring palm warms mine although the tips of my fingers remain chilled. I try to smile, force myself to pay attention to the steps, but her breathless giggles grate on my nerves. It is not long before I take a wrong turn and stumble to a stop. “I am so sorry, Your Majesty, I cannot keep up with your light step.”

  Katherine’s laugh is like a burst of sunshine on a dull day, blinding in its intensity. “Don’t worry, Belle, perhaps Bessie will have the next turn.” I gratefully bob a curtsey and scurry back to my seat, but as I take up my needlework again we hear the sound of heavy boots outside. The door is thrown unceremoniously open.

  The music slithers into discord.

  As silence drops like a stone upon us, the King’s guards march in and surround the Queen, their pikes levelled at her chin. Katherine freezes while Dorothy and Mary run squealing to Lady Edgecombe’s side. The Queen glances rapidly about the room, her eyes wide, her lips as white as her face. A tear trickles down her cheek. “What is it? What is the matter?”

  Her eyes dart from face to face, seeking a friend, and her voice trembles like that of a reprimanded child. Behind her, Lady Rochford lets out a moan and drops suddenly to her knees, groping for her crucifix, her lips moving in silent prayer.