The Lady of Misrule Read online

  The duke’s recanting got him nowhere: he was to be executed in four days’ time. The Queen had left London even before his trial. She’d spent a couple of weeks at the Tower but she could leave whenever she wanted and one mid-August day she’d upped and gone to another of her palaces. Richmond, we heard from Mrs Partridge, which for me had a lovely ring to it: upriver, to Richmond. We hadn’t seen her leave. She’d entered with pomp and ceremony but perhaps her greatest luxury now was privacy; she could choose what, if anything, to give of herself to her public and on this occasion she’d chosen to leave via her private gates. All those years of her every move being subject to scrutiny and objection, but now she could come and go at will and all England had to fall in with her wishes.

  Her leaving before the duke’s trial was pointed, Jane told me over supper that evening: the duke’s fate was to be seen as a matter of justice rather than personal vengeance. But for all its supposed impartiality, in the end the trial hadn’t, we’d heard from Goose, been dignified. He’d made a scene, broken down and begged for mercy. I wondered how Jane had felt to hear this bit of Goose-gossip, because she herself had pleaded in his Hall on that day of her barge journey from Chelsea – not for her life, true, but near enough – but he hadn’t listened to her, had he.

  In the final two days of his father’s life, Guildford made no mention of nor even the merest allusion to the pardon that might possibly be on its way from the Queen. All that talk of his abruptly stopped and was so thoroughly gone that the prospect might never even have crossed his mind. No word, either, of the many various injustices or indignities that usually he perceived himself to be suffering. Up on the wall, he kept instead to observations, which were either overly enthusiastic, like those of a little boy (‘That man down there really doesn’t know how to handle that horse’) or cautious and perplexed, like those of an old man (‘I don’t like the look of those clouds’). Where was the Guildford we knew and didn’t love? I’d spent a month willing him to shut up, but now I was missing his rants. Rather his rants than her silence.

  I was sure he hadn’t stopped hoping for the best for his father. He didn’t look as if he’d given up: on the contrary, he had the look of excitedly nursing a hope but sensibly keeping it clear of his wife’s scorn. Her impatience with him was all too obvious, probably not least to him. But God only knew what she expected from him, under the circumstances. To him, his father had been a hero, a leader, a man of vision, but in a matter of days he’d be obliterated and Guildford himself would be no one, or less than no one: son of a traitor, his life ahead of him merely to be got through. His wife standing unsympathetic beside him, clearly bored to stupefaction, could only have served to stress how alone he was. Which made two of us.

  On the morning of the duke’s execution, Jane and I rose sluggishly, in unspoken accord, so that the deed would be done before we were up. As on all other days, breakfast came; Goose persisted in serving it daily even though neither of us ever touched it. We’d both made clear more than once that we didn’t want it but all we’d ever got for our pains was a big, loose Goose-shrug to suggest that our wishes on the matter were irrelevant. You can wish all you like, said that shrug, but for as long as the sun rises over the Tower, jam will be decanted into little dishes at dawn.

  So, the breakfast tray came in that morning as usual, with the usual niceties observed: linen-wrapped rolls; glaucous jam; eggs with shells so clean as to seem supremely pleased with themselves. The bread would keep for later or find its way to Twig if he was lucky, and the untouched jam could be spooned back into its pot, but what happened every day to our rapidly cooling eggs? Goose ate them, was my guess, just as she probably made neat work of the bread and jam.

  And who could blame her? She needed all the help she could get: she was never at her best, first thing. That particular morning, we were treated to a truncated acknowledgement in place of anything that could accurately be termed a greeting: ‘Ladies …’ Blur showed on Goose more than on most people because of her colouring: those red-rimmed eyes got her off to a poor start. Jane was unusually dishevelled for the hour, but that was the extent of her indisposition; her Goose-greeting was as crisp as ever.

  So the formalities were observed in our room while, on the other side of the wall and a short walk away, someone lugged a pail of water towards the site of an atrocity, preparing to tackle the sullen cling of blood to wooden boards; blood that had, just an hour beforehand, richly filled a man. While we’d dozed, the duke had presented himself for his own butchering. Ending a lifetime of being respected, consulted and deferred to, he’d knelt for an anonymous beefy bloke whose only recommendation was a sure hand and a hefty swing.

  Had that day dawned for the duke in any recognisable way, or had it been a mere weakening of the dark? I’d bet that whatever he’d decided to believe about bread and wine hadn’t changed the God to whom he’d prayed during those hours of darkness, nor what he’d said to Him.

  Long before Jane and I had emerged from beneath our pretty coverlet, most Londoners had gathered on Tower Hill to witness the killing of the duke and simultaneous confirmation that England’s throne belonged to the eldest child of the old King and his first wife. The mess of the past twenty years – the string of dead and disgraced queens, the wrecking of churches and murdering of men of the cloth – had been a mishap, and all it would take was the love of a good woman for England to be England again.

  Something told me, though, that no one really believed it. What had Jane said, that night at dinner with the Partridges? It’s all already happened. Change was everywhere, and everybody knew it, and the problem for the Queen, it seemed to me, was that a lot of people had never known nothing else. How could those such as Jane and Guildford be returned to the old way of thinking if they’d never actually known it? This queen was a generation too late, it seemed to me; if she wanted to return England to how it had been in the days when her mother was Queen, then she would have to get rid of us all, she’d have to put us all up there on that platform and no number of bucketfuls of the Thames could ever wash all that blood away.

  The crowd at the execution that morning would have been its own worst enemy, keeping thousands too distant from what they’d come to see, but still they’d have felt it: the rippling recoil from the thump of the blade. We two girls, half asleep in our bed, felt nothing. One advantage of captivity, then: our heads resting oblivious on pillows while a man on the hill outside was losing his to an axe blade. But however much we acted otherwise, we weren’t untouched by what happened on that morning. Jane was a step nearer freedom. She was no longer allied to the Duke of Northumberland because there was no longer a Duke of Northumberland. It was a big step forward, for her; a big step nearer being a normal girl, or a normal noblegirl, give or take the small matter of Guildford. And I’d soon be on my way home.

  After our Christmas kiss, Harry didn’t reappear at Shelley Place for weeks, it being the hardest time of year to travel, but in all that time I jumped at every single answering of the door. Whenever he did manage to come, how, I wondered, should I be? I’d never been anyone in particular before: little Lizzie, carelessly unberibboned and always late to the table. Youngest daughter of his oldest friend. But now I was the girl who, in December darkness, had worked her mouth against his.

  Incredibly, he arrived on St Valentine’s Day. When I came into Hall for supper, there he was, taking his place at the table, and, ‘Lizzie!’ he laughed, as if it were a joke, which I supposed in a way it was.

  It was Lent, which our household – unlike his – observed, so the evening was subdued, with dutiful servings of Godawful stockfish rissoles, not that Harry let it dampen his mood. He was his usual self, his talk as ever of his house and farm, his sons and staff and tenants, his dogs and horses. All I could think, though, all evening, was how he’d taken hold of my hand when everyone else was indoors having the type of fun they were expected to have, and under the vigilant stars he’d licked my tongue from my mouth.

  If he co
uld be his usual self, then so could I – laughing at his jokes – but surely he knew as well as I did that he couldn’t just kiss me like that and walk away. A physical impossibility, was how it felt. There he was, at that table, in the firelight, as a guest of my parents, with our chaplain and our steward, one of my brothers-in-law and one of my uncles, and he was playing to them all but I knew my time would come.

  It being Lent, no spiced wine was served after supper, nor anything else that might make a February evening bearable, so, despite the company, bedtime came early. At Shelley Place, Harry slept as we did, alone, with no need of his principal servant in his room. Unguarded, trusting to us.

  Well, more fool him.

  Up in my own room, undressed and ready for bed, I waited for the house to settle, the brief increase in activity downstairs putting me in mind of how the dogs turned around and around before bedding down. Below me, tables were cleared, folded up, stacked away, and various doors locked, bolted, barred. Then at last was the silence for which I’d been listening: there it was; it, too, holding its breath.

  It was into that silence that I would venture. I’d have to be the one to go to him: he couldn’t come to me, not least because he didn’t know the way to my room.

  Closing my door behind me felt like a launching, a giving up of myself to Fate. Never before had I walked through Shelley Place after everyone else had gone to bed, so it was all new: the listening hard and treading light, the sniping floorboards and fugitive shadows. My nightdress was voluminous around me so that I felt I was flying. Down my staircase I flew, and past the oriel window. I carried no light and had no need of one; I saw myself luminous in that window: I was my own light. Up the stairs, to the gallery; everyone else, all around me, earthbound. All those Lenten-cold bones, everywhere around Shelley Place, huddled into bedclothes. Was that, I wondered, what God wanted of them? I might’ve believed it, once. And if I knew at the back of my mind that I wasn’t flying but falling, I didn’t care, because who better to break my fall than Harry.

  Hurrying along the gallery, it was as if I were coming free of an old skin, although actually I’d only ever been a good girl, in so far as I’d never been actively bad.

  I didn’t know what was going to happen in Harry’s bed. I didn’t even know what I wanted to happen. I’d grown up fearing the indignities of a wedding night, but this was no wedding night. What, though, was it? I didn’t know and didn’t care, and that was the wonder of it: to be trusting to luck, to have faith in Harry. Nothing bad ever happened when he was around.

  Which was all very well, but at the top of his staircase I found a closed door. Ridiculously, I hadn’t anticipated that. Intent on leaving my room and finding my way, I hadn’t thought as far as his actual bedroom door. Which would, of course, be closed. There’s no winning over a closed door, no talking it round; its sole purpose is to stand there asserting its brute resistance. And so there I stood, brought to a halt, feeling silly, wondering how to get past it.

  Knocking, I felt, would be oddly impersonal (Anyone there?). Should I call him? Call him what, though? I’d never called him anything, he was a friend of my parents and it hadn’t been my place to call him anything. My place had been to laugh at his jokes, answer his dutiful enquiries as to my well-being, and welcome his flattery. Nor could I announce myself, because he always called me Lizzie but no one else did and that included me. So, both of us nameless there in the dark.

  That door was so much bigger than I was but I’d come this far and couldn’t let it refuse me. I settled on the simplest course of action: I’d to give it a try, even if I was likely to come humiliatingly up against a lock, a bolt.

  To my surprise, though, when I turned the handle, there was give, and actually it was too much too soon because then there I was, in an open doorway but no nearer knowing how, in all that darkness and silence, to make my presence known.

  But for a moment I forgot about that, forgot about me, because the darkness and silence inside that room was so different from everywhere else in Shelley Place and the difference of course was his being in it: he was there, I knew, even though there was nothing of him to see or hear. He was there, he was there, and for a moment that was enough.

  But then it wasn’t. I paused in the crack of the door, hoping he’d become similarly aware of me. But no word, so I was going to have to do a little more. I pushed the door wider although I myself didn’t move.

  Still nothing.

  I made myself speak: ‘You awake?’

  Within the bed-hangings was an abrupt and drastic shift: him, caught unawares. ’Lizzie?’ Startled, but a squeak of protest in it too.

  I closed the door behind me.

  ‘Lizzie?’ pitching upwards, towards panic, with a buffeting of the hangings: he was up and at the edge of that bed to ward me off.

  And I felt for him, I really did, even as I wanted to laugh, because I knew he had to do the protesting and objecting, and I understood he even had to feel it, too. But it was pointless, it was wasted effort, because whatever would happen would happen. I wouldn’t be discouraged. This was for me to do; he couldn’t do it – family friend, older man, household guest – but I could. He had to let me do this, he had to leave it to me. I was the one who had to cross that room. Me: walking tall, luminous.

  He kept up his complaint as I moved towards his voice. ‘Lizzie, you can’t do this, you can’t come in here.’

  But it was nonsense, and undeserving of a reply. What I said instead was, ‘I’m freezing,’ which was true, although coming from the staircase into an ember-lit room, I should’ve been warming up. ‘Let me in.’

  He had no choice, I was climbing in anyway and the onus was on him to shift.

  The warmth of him alone was an embrace, snatching me up so that there was no turning away, and instantly I was lost to it.

  ‘You are cold,’ and he had to take hold of me because not to do so would’ve been unkind. With a little laugh at my audacity, he asked, ‘What are you doing, coming here?’

  ‘This,’ I said, and kissed him.

  And so there we were, kissing again, just as we’d kissed before: all the time in between collapsed to nothing. The muscularity of his mouth, yet nothing softer. He took a breath to say, ‘You should go back,’ and I said, ‘I will,’ which was true: I would, sometime. But in the meantime, there was no one to know I was there. This night was not the mere dark half of a day; it was made of different stuff. it was vast – stretching from the bed, the room, the house – and it was all for us.

  I laid myself down along the length of him. I’d landed: fallen, and landed. I was heavy on him, substantial, real. We lay bound in linen, a tangle of limbs, every bit of me dwelling on the sensation of every bit of him. This was my world, now: I was home in the grain of his stubble, on the plane of his breastbone, up against the uncompromising collarbones. But we stayed wrapped chaste in our nightshirts: kissing was all we did, that long first night, and at the time I assumed that his reticence came from consideration for me, but later I wondered if he’d been scared.

  I should go back: we both said it often enough but there came a point when it was indisputable; I really did have to go back to my room or I’d fall asleep and be found by his servant in the morning. So, back I went to my room, but lost no sleep over it; it was, I knew, no more than an interruption.

  From then onwards, all I did was wait for the next time. Whatever was going to happen would have to keep to the moments between moments and to places that didn’t really exist. Spring was coming, the better weather making for easier rides home, for fewer occasions when Harry would stay overnight. I had to find places other than the guest room. I needed to furnish our shared time, and who better to do that than me? Me, who’d spent my life in the numerous nooks and crannies of Shelley Place. Now, suddenly, I was running the show and I was good at it, delving into corners which previously I’d avoided, where before perhaps I’d been scared or lonely or cold or bored. I had good use for them now.

  On the day
of the duke’s execution, Guildford’s presence in the neighbouring tower lay heavy on me, but I watched in vain for any sign that it was the same for Jane. What was it that I wanted her to do? I had no idea. Something, though. Shouldn’t we be doing something for him? Weren’t we in this together?

  No word came from him for many days afterwards and eventually I felt compelled to raise it. Over dinner, uncomfortably aware that I was straying into territory that wasn’t mine, I asked her, ‘Do you think you should see Lord Guildford?’

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever even spoken his name before.

  She looked up from her slice of apple tart. ‘Why?’

  It was the most open of looks, but then again, was it? Or, in holding my own gaze as it did, was it a tad defensive?

  If it was, she won, because I found I didn’t know how to answer. And if she truly didn’t know, then I couldn’t tell her.

  Returning her attention to her tart, she said, ‘You go, if you want to,’ and again, there might’ve been some indignation in it but it could as well have been genuine, because when did she ever say something that she didn’t mean.

  You go, if you want to.

  But that was ridiculous. And I didn’t want to. Did I? Of course I didn’t. And it wasn’t for me to do, anyway. What could I do for Guildford?

  But I did end up going to see him, and at her behest. It was September before he broke his silence, via Mrs Partridge; and to Mrs Partridge

  Jane was all acquiescence, properly wifely, agreeing to be there for her husband as long as the rain held off; but then, that afternoon when the chapel clock struck three, we were still in our room and she gave no indication of being about to leave. I stood abruptly, attempting to look purposeful, hoping to prompt her. But she glanced across at me to say, ‘Tell him I’m ill.’