“You’ve done well, mistress,” my father said to me. He indicated that I was to sit in the chair next to him.
It was done then. I was to be married.
“Lord Blackston and I will be in negotiations for terms, and if we come to some that are agreeable to us both, and I expect we will, you will be betrothed to him anon.”
In the front of my mind I thought that surely I had misheard, but the back of my mind heard Edmund breathing his peculiar stalking breath and it warned me that perhaps I had heard correctly after all.
“Sir, did I mishear you? Surely you meant to say that you are arranging for my possible betrothal to Simon, My Lord Blackston’s heir?” I kept my breath steady and my gaze low. The carved wood of the arm of the chair became a focal point.
“You heard me correctly,” Father answered. “At first, Blackston and I had expected to come to some kind of an arrangement for you and for young Simon. However, after laying eyes upon you he found you pleasing to look at and thought that perhaps a nubile young bride would bring him a son of his own after these many long years. His nephew had already reported to him that you have a pleasing manner. He’s convinced that he should take you for himself.”
A minute slipped by. Then another. “He is nearly of an age with you,” I whispered.
“Yes.”
That was all, yes. I had no say in the matter. Lord Cobham could repudiate me because I had rebuked him, which he found disagreeable; no matter if I found him agreeable or not. I had to prove myself pleasing to Simon, and Baron Blackston, but they did not have to prove anything to me. I had questions; my father was not required, nor inclined, to give me answers. I was to marry a man whose skin was as loose as his sputum.
“May I speak?”
My father nodded. I tried my very best to cloak myself with a quiet spirit of gentility.
“I do not think I can love him,” I said. I hoped he would understand. After all, he so clearly loved my mother.
“Love!” He snorted. “Listen to what Thomas’s cursed poetry has wrought in you. It’s a plague upon the sensibilities of my house. You, Mistress Wyatt, will hold your tongue and be obedient as you have so recently learnt. And if God shall bless you with children by Lord Blackston, then you will thank God that through them your name will not be buried in the earth. Think no further of love.”
He dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I curtseyed and fled the room.
I rushed to my chambers and then fast locked the door behind me. My maid, Edithe, was in my room preparing for my evening’s dressing. I flung myself on the bed and she came and stood beside me. “Can I get something for you, mistress?”
I looked into her wear-worn face. Though she was perhaps only five years older than I, she had already borne two children who lived with her mother because she spent most days and nights here at Allington serving me well. Her husband was a field hand at Hever Castle. Disregarding social boundaries I let my horror spill out.
“I am not like my mother, bless her, to want to take purpose in life by the breeding of those who are to follow me. I do not yearn for meaningless ritual, not in worship, not in friendship, not in womanhood, not in marriage, nor in life. How can I live the life I desire?”
She handed me a kerchief to dry my eyes but she spoke to me honestly, not soothingly, woman to woman. “You cannot live a life you desire. Our destiny is not ours to choose. Even Mistress Boleyn must hie her to court because her father and His Grace the Duke of Norfolk ha’ decided her expensive French education shall be put to their good use.”
I took her coarse hands in mine for a moment, admonished by her harsh life, and then I went to bed and wept silent, angry tears of protest that I knew would profit me not at all. In the middle of the night I got up and looked in the trunk where I’d stored Will’s letters. They were gone. I was devastated by the loss of the only physical tokens of our love—papers his hands and mine had touched, breathed upon, kissed. And further, my joints jellied at the thought of them in someone else’s hands, but I dared not make inquiries lest I draw attention to their existence and bring down a rain of abuse.
But Edithe’s comments had given me an idea. I would go to Anne. She would know what to do.
My father, of course, pleased with himself and with me in an odd way, gave me leave the very next day to ride out and visit her. I’d have a short stay and then return.
It was too cold for a walk in the gardens, so we sat in Sir Thomas’s great hall and worked at wretched needlework near the fire for an excuse to talk. She had not been long home from France, having returned with her father after the king’s great meeting at the Field of Cloth of Gold in Calais. I plied the needle whilst she wove the story.
“It was magnificent, Meg,” she told me. “I had thought that perhaps our court was coarse and unsophisticated, missing a certain je ne sais quoi, and I was not looking forward to returning home from Queen Claude’s court,” she said—then she must have caught the look on my face. “Though I missed you, of course, and my lady mother.” She had not mentioned her sister, Mary.
“But I tell you, the king was formidable. He wrestled with Francis and could have won, but he allowed Francis to prevail, which only endeared him to us more. His words were fine; he cut a better figure of a man. I knew, then, that I could come back to England and that, for certes, my fate is here.”
“Mine is too,” I said morosely. I’d poured my story out to her the moment my courtesies with her mother had concluded and we were in private.
Anne set down her needlework. “Come with me to court,” she said.
“What?”
“Come with me to court. It will take some time for your betrothal negotiations to be completed—my father has been working on mine with Butler for years. In the meantime, I go to court with my father in March and you shall come with us!”
Now I set down my needlework. It would certainly appeal to my father—raise my family’s stature for me to be at court in even a minor capacity in Queen Katherine’s household. Sir Thomas rode high in the king’s esteem since the success at Calais, so Baron Blackston could certainly have no objection. And I might never get another chance. When Anne married Piers Butler she’d be off to Ireland.
Anne settled the matter, as she often did, without waiting for my agreement. “I’ll have my father write a letter to yours and you can take it with you upon your return.”
The next day I returned to Allington, the letter from Sir Thomas clutched in my hand. I stilled my wrist as I held it out to my father. I was almost tempted to pray for a positive response, but no need. He agreed. I would leave for court in a little more than one month’s time. My mother was overjoyed and we spent many hours together planning what I would pack in the trunks I’d bring. One day, after she’d left my chamber, Edmund appeared like a sudden onset of disease.
“The court nourishes itself on compromise, taking in the very people who like to pretend that they are good and then retching them out after they cede their alleged moral standards one by one.”
“Pity you’re not coming then,” I retorted. “It sounds like someplace you would thrive.”
“Oh, I’ll get there, after I help Father negotiate your marriage portion,” Edmund said. “I’ll be there to watch as you are broken.”
I dismissed him but couldn’t dismiss his accusations as readily. Would the court bend me to its will too?
FIVE
Year of Our Lord 1522