Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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Had he known of Ursula’s hobby he would have laughed or shrugged. But he did not, nor anything else about her.
Celia rushed to the window seat, peeped through the diamond panes to catch a first glimpse of the King’s procession on the highway from Easebourne. There was nothing to be seen and she turned into the room frowning, “My Lady Aunt, why must Brother Stephen be hid? He told me so little.”
The girl was unaware of how her voice softened and lingered when she spoke the young priest’s name, but Ursula felt a twinge of guilty foreboding. She sighed and sat down. “I’ve been wrong not to tell you, Celia. Acting heedless as a maiden myself in the joy of dressing you, of at last being able to present you below in a manner worthy of a Bohun. Listen! Three days agone, when we knew that the King was at Petworth and would surely come here, Sir Anthony gathered us all in the Hall, all of us down to the lowliest potboy. He stood in the minstrels’ gallery and gave his commands. He said that to be sure, we were Catholic, that we were as devout a family of the True Faith as could be found in England. Nonetheless, we owed temporal allegiance to our King, and must respect his heretic views. That during the royal visit there would be no Masses, though there might be an English prayer service read from Archbishop Cranmer’s new book. That nobody wes to genuflect or cross themselves, nor mention saints. That our chapel would be stripped of its holy statues, even the crucifix! This was done that night, my dear, and oddly forlorn our chapel is now. Empty, barren.”
Celia considered this. “How strange,” she said. “Surely a great lord like Sir Anthony may do as he pleases.”
“Obviously not,” answered Ursula tartly. “Don’t you know, child, that a year ago March, Sir Anthony was thrown in the Fleet like a common criminal?”
The girl’s eyes widened. “Prison?” she said. “For what?”
“For hearing Mass at his mansion in Southwark. It’s forbidden. Oh, he stayed in the Fleet but six weeks. He has powerful friends, and the King likes him as his father liked Sir Anthony’s father.”
“But he had Masses here, until just now,” protested Celia.
“Aye,” said Ursula, “and will resume them. He’s lord on his own manor which is a long way from London. No need for the King or his advisors to know this during their two-day visit.”
“Oh,” repeated Celia, “how very odd.” And she thought with increased fear about Stephen. She knew vaguely of the religious storms and violent changes which had shaken England since before her birth, but until last September her childhood had been monotonous, isolated and dreary.
Her father she could scarcely remember. When she was three he had been stabbed to death in a tavern brawl while defending the Bohun name. Celia had lived thereafter in a garret at the Spread Eagle Inn in Midhurst with her mother who served as barmaid. Celia ran errands, washed tankards, sanded the floors, and even turned the spit, until her gentle, pretty mother, Alice, began complaining to Celia of sharp pains in her belly, which swelled as though there were a babe inside. Celia soon knew that the other servants at the inn thought there was; she listened half-comprehending to many a lewd jest and coarse speculation as to the father. Alice herself bore these jibes in white-faced silence.
But, though the young woman swelled enough to contain twins, none ever came. And at Michaelmas, while the inn was roasting the usual geese and the parish church bell was ringing for curfew, Alice suddenly gave a scream and fell to the floor of their attic room. In a few minutes her heart stopped beating, and by the time the terrified Celia had summoned help, Alice was dead.
They were good to Celia at the inn. Master and Mistress Potts, the innkeepers, set her behind the bar to serve ale in her mother’s place, but she was dazed and lost. She upset tankards, she bungled orders, and she wept much in the night. She had nobody to turn to. Her mother had kept to herself in Midhurst.
Alice had been a Londoner, the only child of a respectable tavern keeper—the owner of the Golden Fleece, which was well-known for its high-toned patronage. The Golden Fleece was proud to welcome visiting gentry from the shires, and it was there that Jack Bohun stayed during his only visit to London in 1537. A moody, hot-tempered bachelor of forty-odd years, he fell headlong in love with Alice.
Jack Bohun was neither a knight nor recognized gentry; yet though he seldom spoke of it, he was never forgetful of his distinguished—albeit unofficial—lineage; he was a Bohun bastard. But until the Bohuns were forced to sell their patrimony to the Earl of Southampton, who left it to his half brother Anthony Browne the elder, Sir John—Jack’s father—treated the boy as his legal heir. Sir John despised his fat wife—a bearer of daughters only—and had felt very much like his King about this matter, though he had none of the King’s power to replace wives. Sir John would have liked to legitimate young Jack, whose mother was a beautiful Bohun cousin. Yet, though the liaison was accepted everywhere, there could be no marriage as long as the inconvenient wife lived, and she did—for some years after her husband. The young bastard, however, was taken to the crumbling Bohun stronghold on St. Ann’s Hill. He was raised with his half sisters, the legitimate heiresses, Mary and Ursula. He shared in the brief years of security, during which Mary was married to Sir Davy Owen, himself a bastard but a Tudor. Jack also shared in the family downfall, when Cowdray and Easebourne and large pieces of Midhurst were bought by the Earl of Southampton and inherited by the Brownes in 1542 when the Earl was killed fighting the Scots.
Jack Bohun was a man of fierce passions and family loyalty, perhaps all the stronger because he was not legitimate. He had deeply resented the newcomers and had quarrelled with Ursula, his remaining half sister, for her acceptance of the Brownes’ hospitality over the years.
Ursula accepted this break with her own realistic philosophy. But she inquired from time to time about the welfare of her brother’s widow. Through the servants at Cowdray, she soon heard of Alice’s death and the sorrowful plight of little Celia, her blood niece.
One day in October Ursula rode from Cowdray into town to the Spread Eagle Inn and asked after the Bohun girl.
Ursula was shown to a small black-beamed chamber off the taproom, and waited with no more than charitable curiosity until a slender girl with matted golden hair and frightened eyes walked slowly through the door.
“Ye sent for me, m’lady?” asked the girl in a breathy, stifled voice.
“If you are Celia de Bohun,” said Ursula. Her voice quavered. At this first glimpse of the downcast face she felt a shock of inexplicable sympathy, a sensation of fulfillment, as though this were her own long-lost child, though Ursula had never borne any.
“Pray sit down, sweeting. Pray do,” she said.
“I’m Celia Bohun, true enough . . .” The child twisted her work-chapped hands and dropped a curtsy, then stood-faintly hostile—in the center of the sanded floor, scarcely seeing the elderly lady whose name she had never heard, and who’d come from the castle for what mysterious purpose she could not fathom, except that it probably represented another blow from fate.
Ursula looked again at the girl, who must be about thirteen, for the bitter quarrel with Jack and his visit to London and lowly marriage had happened fourteen years before. She saw that the tousled hair, properly cleansed would be of a rich buttercup yellow, that the breasts were rounded and straining against the tight, shoddy brown bodice, that the hands though red were delicately made, that the little face had a nascent beauty—full lips, large turquoise eyes with long dark lashes. There was a promise of vibrancy and allure which Ursula herself had never had.
“Celia,” she said gently, “you are my niece, and since you have none who belongs to you now, nor do I, ’tis time we knew one another.”
Celia jerked her hand up and stared, collecting her sorrow-dazed wits, suspecting another stupid jest—in which the world abounded.
“I’m a Bohun, m’lady,” she said defiantly, “and landlord, he said your name was Lady Suth’ell, but I have naught to do wi’ Cowdray.”
“I know, dear,” said Ursula
with tenderness. “But I am a Bohun, too, and your father was my brother.”
Celia then looked with attention at Lady Southwell, at the frayed black velvet cloak, the white gauze widow’s cap which perched on top of grizzled hair above a rawboned, kindly face; she had seldom seen a lady so close, only from a window at the inn when a cavalcade on the way to the castle might stop to make inquiries.
“Mother—” Celia’s voice faltered, and she bit her lip. “My mother,” she went on carefully, “ne’er made mention o’ any kinfolk at Cowdray. She said the Bohuns were all gone. Anyways, my father was a bastard, and quarrelled wi’ the rest afore I was born.”
“Aye—” said Ursula sighing. “True enough, and an ancient tale long past. But I am your aunt, and I wish to be your friend.” Ursula reached out her hand and the girl took it hesitantly, feeling at the touch her first comfort in weeks, or indeed, perhaps in years; for her mother, though gentle, had never spoken much, nor showed feelings.
Thus began their association. And soon, through Ursula’s ambitious plans, began an association with a different and a tragic love for one who would become to her a cherished daughter.
Ursula had no means of her own, and her pride forbade her to ask Sir Anthony to take in another dependent, nor did she wish to introduce Celia as a servant at Cowdray; later though, after training, there might be a proper way to get the girl in the castle as waiting-woman.
In the meantime Celia must continue her duties at the Spread Eagle. “And never forget, dear,” said Ursula, “that this inn was once ours, and that the spread eagle is the Bohun crest, so you have a right here. I’ll speak to the landlord myself.”
Mr. Potts was not much impressed with this logic, but he and his wife were good-tempered people and felt sorry for the girl whom they had known from babyhood.
Celia, therefore, lived at the inn, serving ale and dinners as before, but visiting Ursula at Cowdray quite often. Her aunt soon discovered both the girl’s quick wits and her hunger for knowledge, and also her total lack of education. Not surprised that Celia could neither read nor write, Ursula remedied this to the best of her ability. Celia spent many hours learning, and by mid-January she could recognize whole sentences when Ursula wrote them out in plain block letters. But Ursula’s ambition for the girl grew as her love did; she began to feel that her rough-cut jewel was capable of great brilliance. She also felt that the absence of any religious training must be rectified, and what better instructor for this than the Brownes’ house priest—Brother Stephen?
On the past Candlemas, February 2, Ursula waited outside the private chapel after Mass, and called the monk into the parlor next to the Buck Hall.
“Brother Stephen,” said Ursula, “your duties seem not too arduous. I wonder if you’d help me in a certain matter.”
“Most certainly, Lady, if I can.” Stephen smiled, bowing slightly, and waited. He was a tall young man, made taller by the black Benedictine robes. His care for the household of two hundred souls at Cowdray was punctilious and diligent. He celebrated the Masses, administered the sacraments—baptism, marriage, burials when such were required—otherwise he kept to himself, and lived by preference in a stark cabin near the ruined chapel of St. Ann on top of the hill which had once been the Bohun stronghold. He had some books in his cell, and was reputed something of a scholar, but he had no intimates.
Ursula explained her wishes, and the situation.
“I see,” said Stephen after a moment. “And it’s true that your niece should have religious instruction; yet that I should also teach her some Latin and arithmetic seems to me overweening. What simple woman has use for learning? What profit in the station where God has placed her?”
He was, as always, courteous, and hid his amusement at the old lady’s folly. He understood that Lady Ursula was lonely, and that she had found an object for her famished affections. He liked the woman and listened to her blameless confessions with sympathy, feeling kinship to one who occasionally rebelled against patronage and whose pride had often been hurt. Humbleness and obedience he knew were the Christian virtues he himself lacked most. The other two Benedictine vows, poverty and chastity, had never troubled him.
“I do not, good Brother, expect Celia to remain in her present station,” said Ursula, her faded eyes shining. “I’ve cast her horoscope; she has Jupiter and Venus in benign aspects and most auspicious stars too.”
Stephen laughed. “Ah, to be sure, you dabble in astrology,” he said tolerantly. “It’s not considered a sin, and if it gives you comfort . . . nonetheless, God’s will alone determines us.”
“To be sure,” Ursula agreed looking up at the monk. “But God’s will rules the heavenly bodies, too.” It occurred to her that Stephen was a comely man; that his features were regular, his hair around the tonsure black and curly, that there was vital attraction in him. But one did not think of a monk as quite a man. Besides this one had a dignity and aloofness which made him seem older than the twenty-seven years someone had said that he was. “At least see the child,” added Ursula softly. “She’s virtually a pagan. She knows nothing about Our Dear Lord’s Passion or the Trinity, she barely knows the name of the Blessed Virgin.”
“Execrable!” cried Stephen, shocked. “She must not fall into the damnable heresies that surround us. Tell her to come to me on St. Ann’s Hill at noon tomorrow. I’ll be waiting.” He said, “Benedicite,” and strode out of the castle to cross the River Rother and climb the hill to his quarters.
The medieval Bohun castle was in ruins, as most of its stones had been hauled down to the meadow when Sir David Owen married Mary de Bohun and began to build himself a comfortable Tudor mansion amid the hazel tree copse, which in Norman French was called La Coudraie.
Sir David’s architectural efforts had been hampered by poverty; no poverty hampered the new owners. The Earl of Southampton and later his brother Anthony Browne had made a veritable palace out of Cowdray.
Stephen disliked the place, not only for its ostentation but also because of the tainted riches which had produced it. Stolen money. Money which rightly belonged to God. Stephen had had many an anguished struggle with his conscience over his position as chaplain to the Brownes, although it was the result of humiliation and obedience.
Stephen’s thoughts returned to that struggle as he clambered up the frozen muddy footpath to the top of St. Ann’s Hill. He entered his cot, and blowing the smoldering embers, swung the crane holding the iron pot of mutton stew over the fire to heat.
His home was spartan but not uncomfortable. It was of wood, and of stone from the eastern side of the fallen curtain wall. It was neatly thatched and had a plank floor. St. Ann’s little chapel sheltered it from the north winds, and was used by Stephen for private devotions. His wooden bed was piled with fresh straw, which he frequently renewed, for he was cleanly by nature and abhorred lice and fleas. Since leaving the two abbeys he had been raised in, and the company of his brother monks, he had obtained permission from his superior in France to somewhat relax the rule against private possession.
He therefore owned some vellum-bound books; and besides his black and silver crucifix there hung near the one window an oddly charming and naive painting of the Virgin. She was golden-haired and seated in a flowery meadow, smiling mysteriously. This bright sketch by an Italian painter—possibly Botticelli—was sent to Stephen in France at his ordination.
The French Abbot of Marmoutier was a reasonable man, and upon saying his reluctant farewell to Stephen added, “Your situation in that barbarous and now heretical country will be difficult enough, my son, without your being deprived of your innocent possessions. I know your true character. You will be tempted to no transgressions of our Rule. You have taken the sacred vows, and are as certain to honor them as any monk ever under my care.”
This was extraordinary praise from the usually taciturn abbot, and Stephen, as he knelt to kiss the ring, was deeply moved. He returned to his native land in a glow of zeal and passionate dedication. He had not gues
sed at the rebellions, the angers, the contempts he would have to surmount.
Stephen Marsdon had been born in East Sussex, at Medfield near Alfriston. As the youngest son, he was destined to the Church from infancy. Since the days of the Conqueror a Marsdon younger son had been given to the Church, and Stephen accepted his lot without question. When he was nine his father, Robert, had taken him the day’s journey to Battle Abbey where he entered Stephen as a subnovice and pupil. The boy’s remaining childhood was happy. He was healthy, and excelled at the sports permitted to the boarders—races, stoolball, wrestling and round games. Since he had never known them, he did not miss the accomplishments taught to worldly young gentlemen, jousting, lute playing or dancing. He was studious too, and easily mastered Latin and what classics he was given. He was also popular with the other boys. He knew that the teaching monks favored him, and one day overheard the Abbot of Battle, John Hammond saying to the novice-master, “Keep your eye on Stephen Marsdon. By Our Blessed Lady, I foresee a brilliant future for him in the Church. He will be an abbot himself one day, mark my words!”
This prediction delighted Stephen, who was a natural leader and yet had a mystical side which made the plainchant of the monks, the church festivals, the rituals, candles and incense, all agreeable to him.
It was when Stephen was eleven, in 1536, that the spectacular catastrophes began throughout England. The events which caused these scarcely filtered down to the sheltered boys at Battle. The final blow two years later came as a shock so great that Stephen and the other subnovices at first thought it a hoax.