Constant Heart (37 page)

“To what?”

“There is no shrub. No screen.” I had truly lost my senses. And worse, there was no way to fix it.

“But is that not precisely what you commanded be done?”

“Aye. But, I did not mean . . . what will . . .”

“Did you not order the plants and flowers to be put up in their place?”

“Aye. But . . . there is no shrub. No screen.”

Marget looked at me as if I were daft.

“No rose alleys for use as a
common privy
.”

Her eyes grew wide as she comprehended my words. “They will only be here for one night.”

“One hundred people for one night means . . .” I stalked from the rooms, muttering to myself. Maybe . . . perhaps the area behind the stables could be used.

When I returned to court, I left Nicholas to oversee the work in my place. The steward was eminently capable, but I needed a man who knew the court. A man who could think of the visit as I had done. In truth, who could think perhaps a bit better than I had done. A man whose work would not be found wanting. All must be perfect if I were to find favor in Her Majesty’s eyes.

And I had to find favor in Her Majesty’s eyes. Everything depended upon it.

41

T
he weather turned and Lytham sent me to Holleystone. By March, the air had warmed considerably. I was certain the babe would stay. It grew stronger within me each day, like a wych elm sending out shoots.

But like a wych elm, it must have developed some inner rot. For one week later, all came crashing down upon me. A bloody flux came, beginning with an all too familiar cramping in my back. By the time the midwife had been summoned, I delivered myself of a dead girl. As if knowing my need for warmth had been met and that she had served some purpose through the winter, the babe had expired.

I was inconsolable. Worse, I did not wish to be comforted.

Only Joan was brave enough to risk my ire.

“Why can I not keep a babe?”

“I do not know.”

“What secret sin do I harbor that God will not give me a babe?”

“We cannot know what God, in His mercy, keeps to himself.”

“What is worse? For my lord to know I have lost another babe or for him to think me barren?”

“Hush you now.”

“In the end, the result is still the same.”

I kept to my bed for two weeks. And when I rose, I did it with the knowledge that I would never hope or dream or laugh again. In those bleak days, spring mocked me. Life was flowering, life was singing, life was cavorting through the fields. Everywhere I looked, life was in bud.

Everywhere except my womb.

I did not want company. I did not want companionship. I did not want any but the ones I could never have, nor hope to hold. My only goal was to keep in perpetual motion, for when I stopped, I knew my grief would overtake me. I took to walking—great long walks about the estate. Keeping to the paths and roads in order not to soil my clothes, I walked its boundaries over and over. And then slowly my walks took on a meaning and a purpose. And more often than not, I would set my feet on the path to Falconer’s.

Falconer rarely spoke but to his birds. When the servants brought him dinner from the kitchens, he made me to eat and drink of it. But mostly, I just watched him work. For a man so rude, he had such gentle hands. When he took the birds into the park, I would follow.

“They are a little like children, are they not?”

“In what way, my lady?”

“They depend upon you.”

“Aye. But only because I have trained them to, my lady.”

“What happens if they do not?”

“My lady?” My question had pressed a crease into his brow.

“What happens if they do not depend upon you?”

“If I cannot give them food, provide them meat, then they fly away in order to find it elsewhere.”

“But if you do provide it . . . then they stay?”

“Aye, my lady.”

When the birds were fed, when they were sustained, they stayed.

I felt my face fold in upon itself and saw Falconer gaze upon me with horror. But I could not stop myself from weeping and I could not stay the words which followed. “Why do my babes not stay? What is wrong with me? What is so misformed within me?” I wept as I had not since the birth.

Falconer, caught between an apparent abhorrence of tears and a lady who would not dismiss him, could only stand and watch. But then, as if by a miracle, Joan appeared to console me. She shepherded me away from poor Falconer toward home.

Following that outburst, Joan made certain I carried always a portion of Melancholy Thistle about me. She pierced a stalk and threaded a string through it, then draped it over my head about my neck. I could not care how I appeared; I had not even painted in weeks. And so I went around, bedecked with it for some days until the stalk went brittle, the string pulled through its hole, and it tumbled from me. After that, she soaked some of the thistles in wine and in the forenoons, when I was most apt to be overcome by dark moods, she set it before me and urged me to drink of it.

With Joan’s ministrations, I was ready to face Lytham by the time I met up with him at Brustleigh. Ready to pretend that the child had never been. And indeed, as far as the earl knew, she had never existed.

Lytham had returned to survey the roads within the parish and found them in shameful disrepair. At one point, from cause of rains, the whole width of the road had sunk into a huge hole. He ordered the track remade around it. The lesser holes he ordered filled with stones. There was some dispute over the hedgerows lining the way. Lytham considered that they crowded the road too much. The parish insisted that two horses abreast could pass without problem. When he tried to inform them of the many carts and the traffic expected with Her Majesty’s arrival, they could not conceive of it. He ended by pledging the men and monies to complete the work himself. And then, finally, all was ready. We awaited only Her Majesty’s visit.

But for cause of rains, the Progress was delayed. And then pushed back and rescheduled. There were rumors that it might be cancelled entirely, but as Brustleigh was one of the first estates on the itinerary, Lytham insisted that she might arrive at any time. And that we must be ready.

Due to the long delay, the meat of the animals we had slaughtered in June was no longer fit for serving. Spices did not hide the rancid taste, and stewing did nothing to disguise the texture of rotting flesh. We sent it all out into the village. Other provisions had expired as well. And with the constant rains, the roads soon needed further work. Lytham commanded men out into the drenching downpours to fill in what holes they could and make a way around the parts of roads which were impassable.

But all his work was worth the effort, for with a break in the weather, we were sent a message that Her Majesty had finally started out upon her way.

Six days before the Queen’s visit, carts began to roll into the courtyard. Two hundred of them, pulled with six horses apiece. They were led by a Gentleman Usher, and he had with him an army of men to disgorge the bounty.

And so began the invasion.

In my chambers, they threw up ladders to pull down the tapestries.

“But those are the finest of work. Ordered especially for—”

Lytham’s hand squeezed my own, causing enough pain to stop my words.

Swiftly, they were rolled up and taken from the room. And another hanging was put up in its place. And then they started to dismantle the bed.

“Surely you do not—”

“Perhaps, Lord Lytham, you and the lady would seek entertainment elsewhere.”

And as easy as that, we were dismissed.

Under their exacting eyes, most of our furniture was carried out and the Queen’s carried in. The Great Chamber at the head of the stairs was transformed into a Presence Chamber, complete with the throne Lytham had ordered constructed. Lytham’s rooms were turned into a Council Chamber and space for Her Majesty’s clerks to work. And once all was arranged, there were guards posted at each door.

I had become an intruder in my own home.

42

T
hree days before the visit, we were joined by an officer of the Wardrobe of Robes and three of his men. Two days before the visit, a man from the Controller of Works appeared to change the locks on all of our doors. Once the locks were secured, staff from the Tower’s Jewel House brought the Queen’s baubles. There were silver perfuming pots for her bedchamber and gilt water pots for her Privy Chamber. Beautiful jeweled salt cellars and vessels of gold to grace her dining table.

One day before the visit, an officer of the Keeper of the Council Chamber advised that it might enhance the rooms were they garlanded with branches and flowers.

Lytham ordered the grounds to be sacked for greenery. Only the knot work garden, which could be seen from my window, was spared.

The day we were to expect her, people began to trickle in as soon as the sun had woken. Before I had taken my breakfast, clerks were already at work within their chambers, and Her Majesty’s personal cooks were at work in the kitchens. Those from the village taking part in Lytham’s play had appeared and they worked on practicing the entertainments. But in the forenoon, when we should have received word of her approach, we received a lone man on horseback instead.

Lytham went to intercept him. “Her Majesty comes?”

He dismounted, bowed stiffly, and then rose. “Her Majesty does not come, my lord.”

“There is some delay?”

“My lord, there is some change.”

“So she will come tomorrow?”

“Nay, my lord.”

“Then . . . the day after?”

“Her Majesty’s Grace, my lord, comes not at all.”

Without further explanation, the man strode past us into the house and began urging people to gather the royal possessions.

Lytham followed the man inside and I followed Lytham. We had to force our way through the halls. The officers of Her Majesty’s household who had installed themselves in our quarters were leaving the house at a run, heading toward the stables, eager to rejoin their Queen.

“You say she is not coming? But why?”

“She has shortened her visit to My Lord de Winter’s. On the morrow she is on to Windsor Castle, my lord.”

“To Windsor?”

“She has deemed the roads impassable. She has cancelled the Progress.”

Lytham spun on a heel. He ran to the stables so quickly that I had to trot to keep at his heels. And even then I had to jump from his path as he mounted his horse and galloped away out the gate.

I was left to oversee the packing up and leaving by myself.

The Gentleman Usher bowed when he became aware of my presence. “It is good you had so many useful objects, for the leaving is much more swift, my lady.”

Behind him, a man carried the crimson and gilt-covered throne from the house.

“But, the throne . . .”

“Her Majesty takes great joy in such splendid, lovely things, my lady. And surely you have no use for a throne.”

“Nay, of course not.”

“You will be reimbursed for normal expense, my lady.”

“Of course.” But we had soared well past ordinary expense on our climb to greatness.

I stood in front of the house, along with those from the village, and watched the carts sway out of sight. Her Majesty’s Grace was not coming. And still the kitchens were filled with food, the stables bulged with hay, and the villagers stood unused with no thanks or recompense for their great efforts. And so I told Nicholas to ask them all to come within the gates and stay and be fed and show their fellows the entertainments they had planned.

When Lytham finally returned, it was to the sight of bonfires and feasting.

His eyes glinted rage, though he slumped in the saddle.

I met him at the stable.

“Why the crowds?”

“I invited the townspeople.”

“So they can be party to my disgrace?”

“So they can profit from their efforts. What else are we to do with all of these provisions?”

That night Brustleigh was the site of great revelry not seen by the Earls of Lytham since Empress Mathilda was defeated and returned to France some three hundred years before. The sitting Earl of Lytham passed the long night in his chambers alone.

The next morning I haunted the passage between his chambers and my own, hoping for sounds of stirring. For the melody of a lute or a horn.

I heard nothing.

I dined alone and supped alone.

It was only the next day that he made an appearance, and that at supper. We ate in silence. But when my lord made to leave, I left with him. When he took himself outside into the gardens, I followed. We took a turn about the fountain. Its water splashed silver in the moonlight. Rather ironic, considering the amount of silver it had cost to build.

“What are we to do, Lytham?”

“I do not know. I have no means left of holding Her Majesty’s attention. No hope left for advancement. I shall never obtain a Garter Knighthood now. I am worse than my brother. He only gambled with money. I have gambled all I own . . . more still than I own . . . and I have lost everything.”

Rage pushed at my chest, suffocating words, overriding reason. An unholy rage directed at a sovereign so indifferent, so needy. She consumed without discretion. She stole without knowledge. She had dictated every aspect of my life. She had stolen my husband’s attentions, stolen my chambers, and she had stolen my money. “She has no right to treat you in this manner!”

“She has every right. She does not even know she treats me thus.”

“Even now you defend her?”

“Have a care. That woman is your Majesty’s Grace.”

“Grace!” A gurgle of wild laughter escaped my lips. “Grace? She has none. She is a beggar. And what she cannot beg, she borrows or steals! She is no better than a common thief. Nay, worse! For she has no need. Need she men? She hath in abundance. Need she money? She has but to mint some. Need she castles, carriages, and gardens? She has only to order them built. She has all and I have
nothing
. Because everything I had, I gave her.”

43

W
e quit Brustleigh as soon as we were able, as soon as the rains lessened, and returned to London. The trip did nothing to buoy Lytham’s dark mood. The constant rains had ruined another year’s crops. People had taken to the streets in riots. Bread cost a small fortune. There was death from starvation and disease stalked the land.