Author: Anya Seton
Category: Literature
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Emma’s black eyes took on an opaque look. “I’m no fool,” she said contemptuously. “I’ve been speaking wi’ the landlord here. He was mealymouthed, wouldna say this nor that, but I trapped him. They’ve a priest, all right, but he’s hid for the nonce. We must wait ’til the King’s gone. It’s simple.” She took a deep breath and squared her jaw. “When I intend a thing, ’tis good as done. And when I want a thing, I’ll get it. Soon or late. I have means. God heeds me when I speak.”
Julian looked at her sharply. His perceptions quivered. The arrogance was not so surprising, nor the apparent piety in a woman who had almost become a nun. The abnormal flavor came more from a sudden ruthless note in her flat voice, the flexing of her large hands with their thick doubled—back thumbs. And the narrowing of those slanted eyes. Whatever it was, he was reminded, not this time of the oriental slave girl, but of a lunatic he had once seen chained to the wall in Bedlam.
The impression passed at once, for Emma got up, smoothing her skirts.
“Now that we happen here, whilst the King is, we must try to get a glimpse of him,” she said chuckling. “That’ll be something to tell our little Charles, won’t it, Kit?” She touched her husband’s arm.
“Our son,” she explained to Julian, “six years old, come Christmastide, and the apple of our eyes, since he looks to be the only one!”
So natural and maternal a remark convinced Julian that his own predicament was inspiring him to overwrought fancies. Mistress Allen was only an ordinary provincial manor lady, bent on nothing more sinister than retrieving money of which she felt defrauded, and in the process either quarreling with or using people. He had met dozens just like her.
He bade them good-bye, thanked them for the meal, and went out to the inn stables to confer with the ostler, who asserted with conviction that there was not a horse for hire today in the whole of Sussex.
“Furdermore,” said the ostler gloomily, “King’s train ’as et up all the fodder an’ pasture fur miles, ye’ll no find an oxcart eider to carry ye to Lunnon, Marster.”
Julian went upstairs to Celia’s hot attic room, and took from his bag the book he had carried with him. It was the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius and his favorite nonmedical reading, but today the Roman Emperor’s aphorisms did little to lift his despondency.
On the next morning the King left Cowdray, bound south to Lord de la Warre’s Halnaker House, near Chichester. The Allens were amongst the hordes lining the highway to watch the King go by at the end of an hour’s file of laden carts and mules, of mounted knights and equerries.
Edward responded gallantly to the cheers of his people. He waved and he smiled. He caught a bouquet of roses a little girl threw to him, and tucked it under his pommel.
Only Henry Sidney and the yeoman of the privy chamber knew that Edward had been sick in the night with belly gripes, which kept him for an hour straining on the close stool, and that when he finally lay in bed exhausted, he had begun a queer little hacking cough and spat a trace of blood into a silk handkerchief. Later, when Edward suddenly began to sweat, Henry had been sufficiently alarmed to mention the Italian physician.
“He may yet be near, your grace, since there is no way, I believe, of leaving Midhurst at present.”
But Edward, like his father, was given to obstinate whims. He cried out that the fellow was a Spanish spy, that he hated foreigners, that Henry was no true friend to harass his King with outrageous suggestions.
So distraught and tearful did Edward become that Henry spoke no further, and was relieved to see the boy fall into a natural sleep. Edward had recovered by morning. Henry again forgot his fears, yet determined to restrict the excessive entertainment and wearisome banquets during the rest of the Progress.
At Cowdray, the tension gave way to general laxness. Even the steward ceased his anxious supervisions, and retiring to his room, ignored the appalling mess which the servants must be chivvied into cleaning up.
Anthony and Lady Jane waited by the gatehouse until the last flourish of trumpets faded after the turn into the highway, then he put his arm around her and crossed himself. “Blessed St. Mary,” he said softly, “it went well, my dear, and it is over.”
She gave a sob, leaning her face on his shoulder. “Now our babe . . . he can be brought down to the chapel . . .”
Anthony nodded. “And that wretched monk released. I vow I scarce thought of him, or the child, during this visit—for which God forgive me.” He gave a gigantic yawn, and said, “But, we’ve still got the Dacres. And Clinton. I’m not sure of the latter. He might go peaching to Northumberland—and by cock’s bones I’m so weary I’d forgot the plot! I daren’t release the priest until I sound out Clinton!”
Jane did not comprehend, except that here were more unnatural delays. She looked piteously at her husband, saying, “Anthony, I can bear no more . . .” and fainted on the flagstones.
Anthony, though concerned as Jane lay on their bed in a half-swoon, inert, refusing food, praying in snatches, was nonetheless grateful for a respite.
Lord Clinton and his retinue left the next day en route to Greenwich, where the Lord High Admiral had urgent business.
Geraldine produced floods of tears on parting with her betrothed. The wedding was planned for September. She had the betrothal ring on her finger—held with thread—and she was so content with her good fortune that she became kinder to everyone, and immediately took charge of Cowdray as she had used to do. Anthony was constrained to admire her aptitude, as she roused the steward and bullied the servants. Her every act proclaimed that she was no longer the neglected dowager, a knight’s widow, but the future Baroness Clinton and would, when the Dudley plans matured, be one of the leading peeresses in the realm.
On the day after Clinton’s departure she directed Anthony to release the house priest. “Let him bury the babe,” she said, “then get rid of him. I dislike the man and do not wish him in a house I am associated with. I think him bigoted and dangerously pigheaded. You can find someone else more conformable.”
Anthony had been dazed by Geraldine’s sudden emergence. But he took exception to this command, and his baffled irritations exploded.
“My lady,” he said coldly, “I’m grateful for your interest, since my wife is ailing. I rejoice in your changed prospects, and wish you well. There are many matters I don’t fully understand. Nor perhaps wish to. Whatever your secrets may be with my Lord Clinton, I wish no part of them.”
Geraldine’s eyes narrowed, she tilted her brassy curled head and looked up at him. “Are you certain you don’t, Anthony?” she asked softly. “I know you well, you’re ambitious, I think a coronet would please you. You would like to be called ‘my lord,’ to receive the Garter. You might enjoy a place in the Privy Council . . .”
“Whose Privy Council?” said Anthony roughly, “And by what huggermuggery? There’s one I’ll never bend to, I despise him. And his so-called religion.”
“So virtuous . . .” murmured Geraldine, her lips quirking, “so upright, so honorable . . . yet you plunged Cowdray into sham these last days, you toadied the King!”
“I respected the King’s known views and wishes,” Anthony cried, furious at the partial truth and her sardonically raised brows. “But, I’ll make no further concessions, and I’ll not discharge my chaplain.”
Geraldine shrugged. “As long as I am under your roof—andbear your name I, too, must make concessions . . . later . . .” she let the word hang in the air, fraught with meaning and subtle threat.
Damn the bitch, Anthony thought as his stepmother glided from the privy parlor where they had been talking.
He started through passages towards one of the old stone stairs in the south wing, bent on releasing the priest at once. His route took him past lesser chambers and storerooms where he seldom penetrated. He paused at the sound of laughter coming from a room he knew vaguely to be Lady Ursula’s. The door was ajar, and he looked in.
He saw first two redheaded Dacres, Magdalen and her b
rother Leonard. Their size, their fox-colored hair, dominated the room. Then, he saw the cocky little Fitzgerald, Geraldine’s brother. The two young men were playing primero, slapping down the cards, throwing half-crowns on the table while Magdalen egged them on impartially. Magdalen was a handsome wench, Anthony thought, as he watched for a moment unseen. Healthy and wholesome as an oak. What an armful in bed though; she was as tall as he, and his height was greater than most.
Anthony dismissed quickly the contrast with his sickly little wife, moaning in their bedchamber. Then he caught sight of Celia.
The girl was sitting on a stool beside her aunt, and looking out the casement window. There was beauty! Innocent springtime, primrose beauty, enhanced by wistfulness. The large sad eyes were the color of the sea when sunlight caught it in a rocky pool.
Her brows and lashes were as brown as seaweed, her rich tumbling hair could match the color of the antique gold chain he had not yet taken off after the King’s visit. She was like the dreamlike virgins who caressed the unicorn in his new tapestry.
Magdalen looked around, suddenly feeling a watcher at the door.
“Ho! Sir Anthony!” she cried, laughing, while she put a warning hand on Leonard’s shoulder. “Have ye coom to chide the gamesters? Ye maun do so, for I vow they cheat!”
Leonard and Gerald sprang to their feet. So did Ursula and Celia. Anthony felt constraint. The men were of his own age, but they made him feel old, that he was the powerful host—the intruder.
“Nay,” he said smiling, “I’ve no wish to stop the gaming, nor to judge it. I passed by on an errand.” He waved them to sit down.
“’Tis snug here,” he said pleasantly to Ursula. “I trust you’ve all you need, my lady?”
“Indeed, so—sir.” She was much startled by his appearance. He had never honored her with a visit before, and for days during and after the King’s visit, she had seen him only from a distance. “Lady Jane is better, I trust?” Ursula had heard whisperings and dark surmises from the servants.
“No worse . . .” said Anthony curtly, reminded of his errand. He looked at the men—Dacre and Fitzgerald. Especially Fitzgerald, Geraldine’s brother, hand in glove with Geraldine.
Well, one could but find out. He was tired of dissembling and nearly ashamed of the role he had played before the King. He looked up at Lady Ursula’s crucifix, he looked at it so long that they all grew puzzled, then Anthony crossed himself.
“This is a Catholic house,” said Anthony harshly. “We will go to Mass, all those who are in and of my house, tomorrow morn at six.”
Leonard and Gerald were puzzled by the note of defiance in their host’s voice. And that he was staring so hard at Gerald.
“Why, to be sure, sir,” said Gerald, his eyebrows quirking like his sister’s. “Why not? We’re all Catholics—though one must sway a bit wi’ the breeze, now and then . . . eh, Sir Anthony?”
Magdalen gave her hearty laugh. “’Twill do us good! I’ve heard no Mass since we left Coomberland, an’ the gobblin’ prayers we’ve been duling, morn an’ night, they’re mortal tedious. Where will ye hold Mass, sir—ye’re chapel’s empty as a turn.”
“It will be refurnished tonight,” said Anthony.
Celia’s heart was beating fast. The King had been gone over two days, but Stephen had not reappeared. She had been imagining all sorts of disasters—that the King’s men had found Stephen and spitted him on a sword or, more likely, that Sir Anthony had in fact turned Protestant and never meant to release his priest, or that Stephen had escaped and fled back to France. She had asked a friendly page; he knew nothing. She finally asked Ursula, but her aunt was unwontedly sharp and indicated that such concern for the house priest was unseemly. At once she began to talk of Leonard Dacre, saying that he was a fine upstanding young lord, that Celia should not be so indifferent to his attentions. Celia had been hurt. She did not comprehend that Ursula’s anxious love produced the sharpness, she only knew that the world had grown shadowy and unmolded. She had no real place at Cowdray with Ursula—inquiry had divulged that the foreign physician still occupied her attic at the Spread Eagle. She had been mutely forlorn.
Anthony’s speech aroused her. She could not be carelessly bold, like Magdalen. She had, however, her own strengths, allied to the recent, tentatively discovered power over men.
She went up to Anthony and said in a low, firm voice, “For the Mass, sir, will you not need your priest—Brother Stephen?”
Anthony was taken aback. The wistful little beauty, who was after all only some relation to the bastard Bohuns, spoke to him as though there were no difference in their rank. There was even accusation in the clear gaze.
Anthony smiled slowly. “You are right, child. We need Brother Stephen for the Mass. Would you like to come with me when I release him?”
“Aye,” Celia said. She heard Ursula’s indrawn breath, she felt the mild astonishment in the Dacres and Gerald. These did not touch her.
“Well, then—” said Anthony, amused and titillated; he motioned her through the door. She went, and he followed.
The young men shrugged and returned to their gaming. Magdalen resumed her teasing comments. Ursula frowned, glanced at her astrolabe, then she, too, looked up at her crucifix. There was no help there to allay foreboding. Ave Maria—Holy Mother of God—she thought, as women did when assailed by maternal fears, yet what could the Immaculate Virgin really know of sensual threats or the need to protect a girl from her own waywardness.
Anthony and Celia circled down the old stone staircase to the cellars. They were dank, and dimly lit by small rough slits hewn at intervals between the foundation stones. The stench of the latrine pit was sickening. Anthony led the way amongst ale casks, kegs of salted pork, rotting wooden coffers filled with rusty ironware from the kitchen, old broken pikes and other disused weapons.
In the darkest corner, Anthony paused at a niche and raised his hand to a heavy iron bolt which was hidden by a jutting of masonry.
Celia gasped. “He’s in there?” she cried. “You’ve bolted him in. Oh, could you not trust him?”
Anthony’s hand stayed a moment. “Aye,” he said with some compunction. “I gave no order for bolting, must be the steward’s carefulness, he’s the only one knows the priest is here.” Anthony slid back the bolt, and swung open a little door scarce three feet high. They peered in together and though one of the foundation slits gave scanty light, at first they could see nobody. “Brother Stephen!” Anthony said.
There was a stirring on the floor, where they saw a long dark figure lying on a pile of straw. “I want no food, only water—” muttered a voice from the darkness.
Celia, pushing past Anthony, squeezed herself through the door and ran to kneel by the figure. “’Tis not the steward!” she cried. “’Tis me, Celia, and Sir Anthony himself. You’re free, sir, free!”
Through fevered mists, where he saw sometimes grinning red demons, sometimes the anxious faces of his fellow monks at Marmoutier, Stephen heard the girl’s beseeching frightened voice.
“Begone . . . Celia . . .” he whispered. “In your hair are golden snakes, perchance a golden rat hides in the snakes . . .”
His hand raised to cross himself, then fell limp.
“Oh, what ails him!” Celia cried, she snatched the burning hand and held it against her cool cheek.
“Delirium,” said Anthony grimly. “Wait here.”
She obeyed, crouching beside Stephen, fondling his hand and wetting it with tears.
Anthony returned at once with two stout kitchen varlets. They lifted Stephen and eased him through the door. Celia, in backing off so as not to impede them, stumbled over something soft and squashy. She felt of it. Only a dead rat. She had seen hundreds of those, and this one’s stink was hardly noticeable amongst the stinks of human ordure seeping through the wall.
Yet it was the rat which caused Stephen’s present danger. They found the bite on Stephen’s right thigh when they laid the monk on a long counter in the sculle
ry. The men had forgotten Celia as they stripped off the black habit, and exposed the young man naked. She shrank against the serving hatch and stared.
She had not known how well-made Stephen’s body was, with broad shoulders, narrow hips, the muscles rounded, the flushed skin as smooth and without blemishes as her own. Her shocked gaze flickered over the mat of curly black hair on his chest, the black hair further down which nestled around the large reddish objects which she had vaguely known men to possess and had seen tiny pale replicas of on boy babies. Her cheeks grew hot, she felt the heat into her scalp, and she looked away troubled, fascinated. Then she heard what Sir Anthony was saying.
“God’s nails—Look at that!” Anthony poked a finger around a puffy mass of proud flesh from which yellow-green pus trickled.
Red streaks ran down Stephen’s swollen leg; he winced when Anthony touched it and resumed the incoherent mutters, twitching his head from side to side and shivering with a violent chill.
Anthony had seen few wounds in his twenty-five years, and never serious ones since he had never been to war, but he knew that rat bites could be most dangerous. “I doubt he’ll live . . .” said Anthony sadly.
The two scullions shook their heads. They liked the house priest, who never chided them unduly, nor gave long exhortations in the confessional.
“We should send for the barber,” continued Anthony, frowning, “or the wise-woman—Old Molly o’ Whiphill, my lady Jane has faith in her potions.”
“Sir Anthony!” Celia choked—she cleared her voice, which was hoarse as a raven’s. “Sir Anthony! There’s a physician at the inn. Master Julian Ridolfi. The one was sent to the King who would have none of him. Get him.”
Anthony stared at the girl. So many events had followed on the brief scene some days ago in the courtyard, and so anguished was her pretty face, that he thought her to be babbling.
“The Italian doctor!” Celia cried shaking Anthony’s arm. “Came from Master Cheke . . . Oh . . . I’ll fetch him myself!” She darted out from the scullery and through the kitchen courtyard.