“Well enough.”
“It could be a good attachment, Lord Henry himself being attached to the Earl of Essex, and Essex riding high. Since he was made Earl Marshal of England six weeks ago my lord of Essex is back in the but of spirits.” My great-uncle frowned. “I wish I knew...”
“Knew what, sir?”
“The mind of the Queen. Lord Essex is now almost in a position to dominate her. Slowly she has given ground slowly he has won it. Often in such cash the brilliant young man seems to hold complete sway over the ageing woman … And yet, no one, no man or woman on earth has ever dominated the Queen since she came to the throne forty years ago. She has such inborn greatness that if he is not careful he’ll ride himself to ruin … In that case have a care you’re not involved in the fall.”
“Lord Henry is also very close with Sir Robert Cecil thwe days. He has written a letter to him every day this week.”
Sir Henry tied the points of his doublet. “On what, may I ask?”
“I think sir, if I am employed by him I must keep his counsel “
“Yw … yw, that’s true. I should not have asked you.”
“Much is to do with Scotland. I can only tell you that.”
“Affairs in Scotland?”
“Affairs in Scotland. Nothing of apparent consequence.”
“What is or is not of consequence depends on the writer and the reader, Maugan. With the Queen in her sixties we all walk a rope drawn across a chasm. She is much racked with rheumatism and with headaches. Any day anything may ham pen.”
“I pray it will not.”
“All men pray it will not.”
Sir Henry straightened his patted velvet hose over his thin shanks. “But it’s not for you to be concerned with that now, Maugan. This is your wedding day … I remember well when your father it only seems yesterday came first to Court as young and as eager as you. His father, my elder brother, brought him up, and we all thought him a handsome young man. Our Queen was then in her thirties, and some hoped he would catch her eye and be advanced, as Leicester and Ralegh and Essex have been. But it did not happen. Perhaps he lacked the stature…”
I said: “Did you ever know my mother?”
“What? ” Sir Henry scratched his beard. “What? Your mother? Well, yes, I did.”
I stared at him. The question had been put casually, without any expectation of this answer.
He said: “I think I was the only one who met her in our family. Your father as happens with handsome and well bred young men new to Court life had a number of interesting affairs. None of them was serious, and your grandfather and grandmother, having regard to their great debts, were making inquiries to see what suitable heiress he might be betrothed to. Then he met your mother, and, it seemed, fell in love with her. She was a Londoner of no distinction of family but some personal charm, and I believe your father even contemplated marriage. However, this was forbidden particularly by your grandmother, whom you will still know as a woman of forceful character and the attachment was broken off. I really believe,” Sir Henry finished dryly, “that it is the only time in his life your father was in love with somebody other than himself.”
“What was her name?”
“Maugan, the same as yours. You were given her surname as your first name. The plague was rampant soon after you were born it had lingered on as it sometimes does from the preViOUS year and an the Maugan family fell in with it. Much against the wishes of his parents your father went down to the Thames side where they lived and took you away. He hired a wet nurse and bore you down to Cornwall. Lady Killigrew was vastly annoyed, for this was just at the time when a betrothal party had been arranged at Arwenack for the Moncks, whose daughter your father married later that year.” Sir Henry smiled as he tucked a handkerchief into his pocket. “During the celebrations attending the betrothal you were kept in the kitchen and passed off as the son of Sarah Amble who was then caring for you! But I believe that Dorothy Monck, after her marriage, never took exception to your presence; indeed, you could hard y have had a more affectionate stepmother.”
‘<I could not. What was my mother like?”
“To look at? Tall, a trifle big boned for a woman. Blue eyed; dark haired. You take after her somewhat. I met her only once but was impressed by her appearance,”
“Do you know where she is buried?”
“No, I have no idea. She did not die then, and I suppose might still be alive she would scarcely be forty yet.”
“She didn’t die? But “
“She recovered from the fever but her father died. He was a herbalist called William Maugan who lived near Hermitage Stairs. Katherine Maugan carried on his business for some years, and become well known for her cures; then she got into trouble with one of the guilds and left London.”
Sir Henry picked up his stick. “I did hear she went into the West Country; but that was years ago. Women who ply that trade sometimes arouse suspicion of witchcraft and the like; I trust she came to some peaceful haven, for she was a worthy woman.”
It was a good day for February, with a north-west breeze and the white clouds high in a sky of starched blue. I went by horse, and Lady Jael and Uncle Simon and Philip Killigrew followed in her coach. We left London by Ludgate and crossed the Fleet Bridge, with its pikes set into the stone and its stone lanthorns ready to be lit for travellers on winter evenings. The fields were just losing their morning frost. Sheep were pasturing in groups. Two windmills were clack-clacking beside a stream. My wedding day.
The worthy son of a worthy woman.
Sue was wearing a gown of russet, I remember that well, though I do not recall a great deal of the ceremony. I think must have been at the church first, because I remember standing at the church door and seeing her come in from the Iych gate, with Thomas on her right hand and Henry on her left, and a cousin by marriage, Dorothy Reskymer~ as a bridesmaid, following with Mr Robert Reskymer, who was to give her away. Sue was wearing her hair braided, not down over her shoulders as she would have if she had not been married before. Round her head she wore a circlet of gold, and the gown was of finest home-spun silk. On the gown were stitched the usual favours, of milk white, flame colour, blue and red. Gold colours were never used because they signified avarice. Had she worn these at her first marriage? Flesh colours were also eschewed for they signified lasciviousness. I should have worn that instead of rosemary. She looked as desirable to me as the scarlet woman.
More people than I had expected. Some bystanders, but some friends. The effeminate Claude from Lord Henry Howarc’s, a halfdozen tavern friends of Thomas’s, Mistress Amelia Reskymer, a cousin Killigrew who had come with young Henry, our faithful steward, Thomas Rosewarne.
Sue smiled at me, and I do not think I returned the smile. In spirit another woman was beside us, holding my hand, peering into my face.
The parson standing at the door said some words, and in some words I had learned I responded. He led the way into the church. A hand was in mine, gloved, fine boned, the hand of a lady. It held to mine with a discreet pressure and then we separated again. There was music in the church. We walked up it, she in advance with my two brothers and Dorothy Reskymer. I followed with Philip Killigrew. ‘Saffron for measles; marjoram and aniseed; comfrey and liquorice …’
We were kneeling then at the altar, the slim, frail, darkhaired scheming girl who was in process of becoming my wife. I turned my head and looked at her. I seemed to see quite clearly and quite cynically her cool fine-boned body lying naked beside me in the bed at Trewoofe. I saw her pale drowned face with the lank black hair lying on the pillow like seaweed. I saw the tiny beads of sweat on her lips, felt her lashes moving on my cheek. All that was going to come again.