Treason's Daughter (4 page)

She steps from the dusky carriage, limbs aching from sitting for so long. She can see a pretty brick house with a lawn in front of it. Somewhere near, a river rushes past. The door of the house opens, and a red-faced man spills out, followed by a woman Hen
guesses must be her aunt. A couple of smaller children run about, whooping, and a dog chases its tail round and round in an ecstasy of excitement. Standing sullenly on the steps of the house is a girl of Hen's age.

‘Aha, aha!' shouts the red-faced man. ‘Richard, dear one.' They clasp each other in a fierce hug, drawing back and looking into each other's face. There is a reckoning of new lines, of hair greying and hair lost, and then another delighted clasp.

‘Robert, Robert.' Hen's father says the name like a benediction. ‘And Martha, good Martha.' He turns to Hen's aunt, smiling still.

‘And this, dear brother, dear sister, is my little pudding cat, all grown up, or very nearly.'

Hen sees the girl at the top of the steps smirk. She feels her cheeks turn crimson. To hide her confusion, she drops into a bow, murmuring: ‘Henrietta, ma'am, if you please.'

‘Well, well,' says Uncle Robert loudly. He seems incapable of any other vocal register. ‘Well, well! Such a beauty. So like her mother.'

His wife shoots him a maddened look. ‘Never mind that, Robert. Come here, child. You must be tired after your journey. I'll show you where you can tidy up. And this, my dear, is your cousin Anne. I am sure you will be great friends.'

Hen looks up to smile at her cousin and sees only disdain.

‘What news, what news from London?' Uncle Robert's voice booms behind her. ‘The parliament, brother. How we're longing to hear of it.'

‘Give me a glass of your finest claret, Robert, and you shall hear all the news.'

‘So good to have visitors. Such a raising of the spirit you bring,
such a quickening of the temper, and you shall fill this country air with news from London. What joy!' says Robert as they walk through the hall.

Anne sullenly shows her cousin up the stairs.

‘You're to share with me,' she says, pushing open a door to a small wood-panelled room. ‘Smaller than you're used to, I expect, compared to London. And you'll have to sleep on the trestle.'

Hen just nods. She walks to the window, where cushions make a seat of the broad sill. The last of the afternoon sun glows gold around the black leading of the pane. Outside, a perfect lawn runs down to a small river. A willow tree curls over the water, the wind ruffling its leaves.

‘What a wonderful room.' She turns to her cousin and is surprised to see the hint of a smile.

‘I like it,' Anne says. ‘Not grand enough for you, I should think.'

Hen shrugs. ‘It's the quiet that worries me. Is it always so quiet?'

‘I suppose so. I hadn't thought about it.'

‘I can't imagine sleeping with all this silence for background noise.'

‘How can silence be background noise?'

Hen shrugs again, and they are silent. They look each other up and down, weighing each other: the young girl's automatic reckoning of relative prettiness. Anne is shorter than Hen, and fair. Her curves show up Hen's lean frame. She has the Challoner green eyes, set in a round and dimpled face. Pretty, thinks Hen. Prettier than me?

‘You're fifteen,' says Anne.

‘Yes. You?'

‘Sixteen. Ever been kissed?'

‘No.'

‘I have.'

‘Who?'

‘Have you read
Romeo and Juliet
?' Anne sits down next to her at the window, pulling a cushion into a close hug. ‘He quoted it to me. “It is the East,” he said, “and my Anne is the sun.”'

‘What's it like?'

‘What's what like?' Anne laughs. ‘I can't tell you more. You might tell. You must earn the rest of the tale.'

‘How?'

‘Come.' Anne stands up and walks towards the door. ‘Let's go down. We've been waiting for you to eat, and I am starved.'

The girls walk down the stairs, towards the sound of Uncle Robert's big laugh. Hen can smell roasting meat, and suddenly she realizes she is famished. They sit – Hen and her father, Anne and her parents – at a long table, and Hen lets the talk fade to a hum while she sets about the food. Her aunt sits at the top of the table, triumph and worry fighting over her stern features. The table is spread with dishes: fruit tarts, two whole roasted chickens, a side of beef, stewed carp, a bowl of purslane stalks, and a small dish of salted anchovies. Some buttered new potatoes sit nearest Hen, and a pile of spinach, black-flecked with nutmeg.

She begins to eat, a morsel of beef and a wing of chicken taking the edge off her hunger. Her fingers are sticky with the fat glaze from the skin, and she wipes them on her shoulder napkin, resisting the urge to lick them clean as she would at home. She hears a sharp intake of breath from her uncle and looks up. Her
father has the triumphant look of one who has broken news of import.

‘Yes,' he says. ‘The parliament looks set to fail.'

Uncle Robert lets out a low whistle. ‘Yet how long has it been since the last one?'

‘Eleven years of personal rule,' says her father.

‘Some would call it tyranny, brother.'

‘Aye, many do, and indeed have to his face in Parliament. Still, he must hear it. He's desperate for money, they say.'

‘Despite the ship money, and the sundry other taxes he's ripped out of us honest merchants?'

‘We've not done all badly. Those inside the monopolies have reason to love the king. But the Scots are proving hard to put down, and costly.'

Uncle Robert nods. ‘Those bastard Scots, eh? And the Earl of Strafford so determined to punish them. Have you met him, brother?'

‘No, and I thank the Lord for it. I have seen him, many a time. His eyes fell on me once, and I thought to cross myself like a papist. He gives the godly ammunition with his very face – it looks like the face Satan borrows to wear for parties.'

They all laugh, except for Aunt Martha.

‘Why should Satan borrow a man's face?' she asks plaintively.

Uncle Robert leans forward, waving a chicken leg with excitement. ‘To the nub, brother, why is Parliament to fail?'

‘You know of John Pym, the MP? He is man of affairs to the Earls of Warwick and Bedford. A connected man, and the Lord bless his courage. He stood there in the chamber and denounced the king's personal rule. It was a clever, measured speech. I brought
my copy for you to read. Did not blame the king. Demanded that a number of committees be set up to investigate the abuses of power in the years of tyranny. Pym said the illegal prerogative taxes were as large a threat to our property as popish innovations are to our church.'

Uncle Robert bangs his wine cup on the table, flushed with pleasure. ‘Hear him! Hear him!'

Richard Challoner smiles at his brother, clearly relishing the role of storyteller. ‘They say the king is steaming with fury, but needs the money so must sit still yet. It's a race to see which wins: the king's hunger for cash, or his fury at little Pym squeaking his demands. The king wants Parliament to vote him the money first, and complain second. The MPs want redress, then they will supply the gilt.'

‘Father,' says Anne. They all turn to look at her. She looks so pretty in the candlelight, thinks Hen.

‘Is King Charles very wicked, then?'

Uncle Robert's horrified face strikes Hen as extraordinarily funny. She swallows a laugh.

‘Wicked? No, no, child.'

‘But you're always complaining about taxes, and saying he should call a parliament, and calling his wife a papist whore.'

‘Anne!' says her mother sharply. She turns to her husband. ‘But she has a point, husband. Tell us what you think of papist whores.'

Something sour settles on the table. Aunt Challoner manages to look both triumphant and sad all at once. Her faded face too deliberately avoids her husband's gaze. For a brief moment, the only sound is the scraping of knives on plates, and the slow, deliberate
thumping of a dog's tail on the floor. A spaniel, it lies with its chin resting on its paws, throwing sad looks at the humans who are so provocatively eating in front of him. Mournful eyes track the grease from the chicken skin sliding down Uncle Robert's chin. The dog lets out a plaintive whine, devoid even of hope.

Richard Challoner speaks up, his voice sounding loud in the awkward hush.

‘You see, Anne, the king cannot be wicked. He is just badly advised. The Earl of Strafford, for example, is a right hard-horse bully. And yes, the queen is a papist. If he can be brought to listen to the good, honest voice of Parliament, not the strident nonsense of those who whisper poison in his ear, then all will be well.'

Uncle Robert nods with vigour, attracting a new and now malevolent stare from Aunt Martha.

‘But,' says Hen, aware of her impertinence at crossing her father, ‘are we not just excusing him? If you, Father, ran your business down, it would be easy to blame your advisors, to spare your feelings. But it would be a lie. A kindly lie, perhaps. You are in charge, and your advisors are not.'

‘The child has a point, Richard,' says her uncle, smiling at her.

‘Aye, she does,' says her father. ‘She's a clever puss, this one.'

Hen looks sideways at Anne, but her cousin is looking towards her mother, a half-smile playing on her lips.

Richard Challoner continues to speak, his hand twisting the stem of his wine glass round and round. Hen looks at her mother's wedding ring, which he wears on his little finger. It catches the light of the candles, glinting at her.

‘Parliament cannot blame the king directly; it would be unthinkable,' he says. ‘So perhaps they say Strafford when they
mean “Your Majesty”, and Laud when they mean “our Sovereign Lord”.'

‘Oh, very good! Laud, Lord,' says Uncle Robert, laughing. He looks towards his wife, inviting her to smile with him. But she frowns back, and the smile dies on his face.

Anne says quickly, ‘And, Uncle, have you seen the king?'

‘I have, child. Hen has too.'

Hen nods solemnly.

‘And what does he look like?'

‘Like a man too small for his own sense of self,' says Challoner.

‘Yes,' Hen says. ‘But also, he makes you want to hug him tightly, and tell him it will all be all right. Even though you know he will curse you for it. That's how he looked to me.'

‘God keep you from hugging princes, clever puss,' says her father, laughing.

Later, lying in bed in the darkness, Hen hears Anne whisper: ‘Are you awake?'

‘Yes.'

‘Clever puss.'

‘I can't help what my father calls me. What was gnawing at your parents?'

‘Mother caught him tupping the maid. Papist. I heard her screaming from the bottom of the garden.'

‘Maid or mother?'

‘Clever puss my arse. Turnip head.'

‘Stop it!' Hen raises her voice, furious now. ‘I'm your guest
here, you witch.' She is shaking with the injustice of it. Taken from her books and her home, to be patronized by this short-arsed cow.

‘Bitch!' Anne whispers back.

Hen thinks of the boys she's seen fighting on the street, when out roaming with Sam a few weeks before. ‘Wind fucker!' she hisses at Anne. ‘Cum-twang!'

Anne is silent. Hen hears her sitting up in bed, the old frame creaking. ‘Wind fucker?' Anne repeats back. ‘Cum-twang? What on earth are you talking about? What is a cum-twang?'

Hen sees her cousin's shoulders shake in the gloomy light. Laugh with her, or hit her?

‘I don't know,' she says simply.

Suddenly, they are both laughing.

‘Cum-twang!' says Anne again. ‘Where, in all that is holy, did you hear that?'

‘If I tell, you must swear, on all that is dear to you, that you will keep my secret.'

‘I swear.'

So Hen tells her about becoming Cesario, about the joy of pulling on her brother's breeches and sauntering through London. Of seeing the street boys fighting and hollering, of eavesdropping on the watermen, and vaulting walls. Of sitting on a low wall behind an alehouse in Southwark, reeling from its triple strength brew. Of the thrill of nearly being caught when old Mr Birch, slipping furtively out of a Southwark stew, saw her and paused, confused. Of sitting with Sam on the bridge as the sun set over a seething city, dappling the Thames with its blood-red light.

There is a pause when her tale finishes. The moon shines into the room and she can see her cousin's outline, the profile of her face and her knees pulled up under the blankets.

‘I won't tell,' says Anne solemnly. ‘I promise. My brother and his friends when they swear it, they clasp hands like this.' She reaches out, palm outstretched, and they clasp hands, thumbs entwined. ‘Now,' Anne says, ‘I swear it on the blood of my mother, on the heads of my brothers.'

Hen smiles and squeezes her cousin's hand.