“Please, Meg.” He dipped to bended knee, the incongruity of which made me laugh out loud. “I’ll not ask you for anything else!”
Once again his charm pushed me toward an action I did not really want to take, though I teasingly waved him away like an errant bee.
“Just hand it to her privately. I cannot do so without drawing attention.” He held out the parchment scroll. I took it in my hand and turned it over. Mistress Anne was carefully inked along the other side in his long, poetic hand and it was sealed with wax.
“What about her?” I asked, glancing toward our new marble terrace where his future wife held court. My father had arranged for Thomas to marry Baron Cobham’s daughter, who, at twenty-one, was two years older than I. It was a great move forward for our family but would shackle Thomas to a woman he loathed. He’d already caught her in the arms of another man, and yet here she was, ready to celebrate Mary Boleyn’s hasty wedding with us as if she were already family. No matter. She pushed us Wyatts forward and that’s all that counted where my father was concerned.
“She’s mine in name only,” Thomas replied.
I nodded a grim agreement.
“I need my friends to keep my spirits up.” He clasped my hands, smiling winsomely. Anne, polished to high shine during her years at the French court, had come home to celebrate her sister safely wed to Sir William Carey, a rich and obedient privy companion of King Henry.
“If you simply wanted to be the kind of friend to Anne that she is to me, I’d have had no qualms. But I know better.”
“See, she likes me!”
“Her father has plans for her, Thomas, and now that her sister, Mary, has disgraced herself at the French court he’s pinned all of his hopes on Anne. He’s not likely to let her marry—nor dally—with the likes of you.”
“It’s only an innocent poem, Meg,” he said, “I promise.” He looked back over his shoulder at the grating sound of his future wife’s laugh. “And besides, mayhap we can arrange a trade of sorts.”
I spun around. “What do you mean?”
“You deliver a note from me to a girl I cannot have and I’ll deliver a note to you from a man you cannot have.”
“You have a note to me from Will?”
He nodded.
“Then what do you mean, ‘a man I cannot have’?” I asked. My father would be thrilled if something could be arranged with Earl Ogilvy. He’d pay a huge dowry if need be.
“Oh, nothing.” Thomas turned quiet.
“All right,” I begrudgingly agreed, tucking Thomas’s letter away. He pulled me close and danced a little jig right there in the ripe stable and I grinned along with him. Keep his spirits up indeed.
“You’re my dearest sister, Meg.” He kissed my cheek lightly. “The most affectionate. The kindest heart. Truly beautiful.” And he meant it. For a woman who is often a highborn companion rather than the center of the swirl, the setting rather than the stone, this compliment was not held lightly. He knew it and used it to his advantage.
Our father called to us from the edge of his expensive new portico and we went to join him and our guests in the drawing room.
Mistress Cobham sat in a corner, demurely playing the virginals, looking for all the world like an angelic being, though, I thought to myself, an angel who dwelled in which realm I could not say. Her brother George, the future Baron Cobham, sat nearby and drank spirits. Where he got them I knew not, as most houses did not keep them. As the fathers withdrew from the room young Sir George patted the seat next to him proprietarily.
“Have a seat, Mistress Wyatt.” He tried to keep his voice inviting but it sounded of a man speaking to his dogs. Nonetheless, trained well, I did as I was told.
“I hear you’ve been at court with your sister, Alice.”
“Yes, though I can hardly call it at court. I stayed at her manor house in the city and attended to her children whilst she attended to the queen. Nevertheless, we did get to spend some days together and for that I am grateful.”
“Did you like court?”
“I did,” I said. “I much prefer it to…. country life. Which one might equate with a slow death.”
He snorted. “I will agree with you there. Country life holds impossible challenges, the largest of which is the management of the animals, and by that, I do not mean the beasts of the field. I mean the hands hired to tend them but who rather spend their days drinking ale at my expense. If they poorly manage the field and the barns I have no recourse but to reprimand them. For if they cannot be held to account for that which is given them to steward, why, then, who is to blame?”
Used to reasoning with my brother Thomas and with Will, I answered with the first thing that came to mind. “The same might be said of those who steward the field hands themselves, is that not so?”
He slowly drained his glass of its amber liquid and quietly set it down. “Good day, Mistress Wyatt,” he said, and then he stood, curtly bowed, and left the room. I remained seated till his sister finished her ethereal song.
I didn’t have to wait long to have the echo from my observation return to me in full force. My father called me into his library shortly after a stiff and uneasy dinner with our guests. Edmund was already there, smirking in the background. Thomas idled by the window out of habit, well out of arm’s reach of my father.
I knew Father would not scar my face days before the celebration of Mary Boleyn’s wedding because the king was rumored to be coming. It’s not that hitting your child, or your wife, was unacceptable. It was only unacceptable to leave marks to prove that it had happened because it would cause discomfort to those who must look upon them.
“My Lord Cobham tells me that you have many opinions on matters which concern you not at all and are not shy about sharing them with your betters.”
“Father, I…. I was trying to have a conversation with him. That’s all.”
“Lord Cobham took it as a rebuke, and, as such, says he has no desire to marry a woman who may scold him for the rest of his years.”
I sat down in the chair next to me afore my knees buckled. “I, marry Lord Cobham?”
“Not any longer,” my father said, his rage barely contained, the skin on his face taut and red like an infected boil.
“Perhaps a scold deserves a scold’s punishment,” Edmund offered. I turned around and glared at him, not bothering to conceal the hatred in my eyes. A woman accused of being a scold would be tied to a clucking chair and publicly dunked in a nearby river, soaking her in humiliation to the general amusement of all who came to watch.
My father barked out a laugh. “Mayhap I should. But….” He came near my chair and towered over me. “You will marry whom I choose. You will be kind and quiet and submissive to the next man I bring to you. You will win him with your gentleness and you will prove your good breeding.”
“And if not?” I dared whisper.
“Then you will get you, immediately, to the furthest abbey I can find. And not an abbey of high standing, either, for I’ll not pay a dowry to the Lord when I’ve already paid your keep these many years. You’ll work out your short years in poverty and dirt so far away that it won’t matter what you say to whom. Do you understand?”
I nodded. He wouldn’t tie me to a clucking chair for the shame it would bring upon him, but he would keep his word and send me to a vermin-ridden abbey, that much I knew. “Yes, sir,” I said demurely, and I meant it this time. I was dismissed, and on my way back to my room I prayed, fervently, that I might speak to Will at Hever Castle and that his father would be in attendance to speak with mine.
The next day, as there were no stable boys in sight, my brother Thomas held my stirrup for me as I got on. Then he held the brood mare for our manservant so he could accompany me. No lady should travel alone, no matter how light the initial path, nor how dark it later grew.