The May Bride Read online

  Katherine merely looked bemused. ‘But this is where I am now.’

  It took only until the second evening for us to get a glimpse of Katherine’s own true colours. The evening started well enough: she had Margie learning to make thread buttons for a new shirt for Edward (‘That’s nice tight work, Margie’), and Dottie embarked upon a tidying-up, if in name only, of her sewing box. My mother and I were working on our own stitching, and Elizabeth, having none of it, was playing cards with Antony. Freed from tutoring Antony in chess, Thomas could indulge in some moody strumming of his lute, to which my father – eyes closed after a wide-travelled day – was listening, or half-listening, or perhaps just appearing to listen. Harry had taken the visiting warrener to the henhouse to ask his opinion of a new, supposedly fox-proof fence, while Edward was absorbed in a ledger, having moved a stool beneath one of the windows to make use of what remained of the natural light. And so there we were, the Seymour family at home of a late spring evening and Katherine might always have been one of us.

  It was Father James who, inadvertently, caused the debacle. He began snoring, but we Seymours were so accustomed to it as barely to notice. A couple of exasperated glances were exchanged at the first few vigorous snorts, but otherwise we simply knuckled down, as always, to endure it. When he’d started up, my mother had been quick, I’d noticed, with an apologetic smile for her new daughter-in-law, or perhaps more of a wince, to make clear that this was, unfortunately, nothing unusual and to be tolerated, as if Father James were simply one of the dogs among whom he lounged at the fireside. Only Elizabeth had begged to differ, tutting extravagantly and rolling her eyes: How embarrassing. The children were too busy to notice, and, anyway, to them, I suppose, all adults were eccentric or distasteful. Katherine had given my mother a smile in kind, keen to be obliging.

  Not too many snores later, though, she made her own small sound. She’d pricked her finger, I assumed, glancing up from my own work, but finding that she was focused on the cloth in her lap, not reeling as she would have done from a needle-prick. The needle was suspended: she’d halted mid-stitch. Father James snuffled loudly again and a gasp escaped Katherine even as she drew in on herself to quell it, which was when I realised with a mixture of horror and delight that she was laughing: she was laughing at our priest. No one else seemed to have noticed the lapse, perhaps because we were so well practised of an evening at closing our ears. There they were, all around me, the Seymours at play as usual, or as much at play as they ever were. Edward, Thomas and the little girls were absorbed in their various activities. Elizabeth was peering at her cards and cursing under her breath, making a drama of the hand she’d been dealt, and, wisely, Antony was scrutinising her for any evidence of cheating. A slackening of my father’s features suggested he’d fallen asleep. Anyway, Katherine’s indiscretion, against Father James’s protracted nasal calamity, had been no louder than a sniff.

  A second glance around showed me that I was wrong: her helplessness hadn’t entirely escaped notice because my mother was repeating that smile but with emphasis, to indicate that she understood, that she was being understanding. I knew rather better than to trust to that, but poor Katherine rose to it, her long, supple backbone unfolding her so that she was looking – respectfully and gratefully – into my mother’s eyes. Unfortunately, such an unguarded stance rendered her vulnerable and, in the same instant, Father James emitted a particularly bestial grunt, which had her felled, doubling over, fingertips of both hands pressed hard to her lips to suppress a moan. And somehow, this time, I was swept along with her, a sensation both mortifying and delicious, so that there we were, the two of us, laughing despite ourselves, laughing into that silent room.

  If I dared look up, my mother’s disappointment, I knew, I just knew, would be staring me in the face, but for once I couldn’t take the prospect of it seriously, could only think of it as a kind of mask, a doleful, pitiful mask. It wasn’t Father James who was funny, I felt, or not really, not our poor old, tired Father James; it was us, we Seymours, because how absurd and incredible that we had ever sat around primly pretending not to hear him.

  I couldn’t hear him again, I knew; I simply couldn’t bear to hear a single snore more. But I’d have to, and very soon. Nor should I catch a glimpse of Katherine, but there was no avoiding her because there she was, in the corner of my eye, shoulders comically quaking. I closed my eyes but heard her fractured, unsuccessfully held breath and then my own breath needed stilling because if any air got into me, any at all, I’d burst. I was on the brink of disaster; I had to be unseeing, unhearing, unbreathing, and the strain of it had icy sweat springing at the roots of my hair. Even though I resolved with every fibre of my being to hear nothing more from Father James, I knew that a snore was on its way, up close, and there’d be nowhere for me to hide. And Katherine, with her bowed head and narrowed shoulders: meekly though she sat there, obliging though she was trying to be, there was no disguising her thrill at her own glaring failure.

  Misguidedly, she tried to mitigate it: ‘Sorry, I’m sorry,’ barely articulating it, rushing it out on a breath before that breath could become a laugh, but this desperate apology only served to alert everyone and then the worst was happening, in that everyone had turned to her. Only my mother spared her, smiling down over her needlework, contriving to look untroubled and giving us all the lead to follow: we were to look away, we were to leave her in peace. But the girls gawped, and Antony hooted a laugh despite not quite knowing why. My father opened his eyes to give his daughter-in-law a fond but surprised smile. Thomas flicked her a glance as if merely to confirm something he’d known all along. And as for Edward: I didn’t have to see his face to know that he’d have mustered a puzzled half-smile while he attempted to fathom what was going on, belatedly aware that his wife was indisposed and that he should probably be coming to her assistance.

  Edward’s attention was enough to prompt another unspooling of Katherine’s spine, and, sitting tall – an impressive transformation – she now looked ahead, looked carefully nowhere. Particularly not, I sensed, at me, an omission that I found exhilarating. Her face was flushed, not blotchy as I knew mine would be, as if she’d been indulging in pleasurable physical activity, and a tendril of hair was loose from her hood. Her intentions were admirable, but as soon as Father James snored again she was beyond herself; me, too, along with her. Her whimpered apology was quite fabulously insincere, testing my mother’s patience and unsettling Edward, and she looked to me, her eyes luminous with tears of laughter.

  ‘Air,’ she pleaded, and together we scrambled to the door, her shoving me aside to be first through it, then clattered through Hall into the courtyard where we could at last give full vent.

  ‘Their faces!’ she shrieked, astounded and jubilant, ‘Their faces!’

  Those Seymour-quiet faces, she meant: their polite concern. Well, for fifteen long years I’d been one of them, I’d suffered being one of them, but then there I was, outside with my new sister-in-law, my saviour, under the milk moon, drinking down that sparkling evening air and noisier even than the swifts.

  4

  Even by that second evening, then, it had begun, my turning from my own family in favour of my new sister-in-law, my falling into step with her. My mother had probably put Katherine’s outburst down to nervousness, but I doubt she cut me any such slack. Not that I much cared, emboldened as I was by having an ally, which was how, in a matter of mere days, I’d come to see Katherine. She was a better kind of sister, I felt, than my real ones.

  In general, my mother appeared pleased with her new daughter-in-law, who knew how to handle her, had the knack of dealing with her. Unlike me, Katherine was able to listen to my mother’s chatter and seem interested. But I’d already endured fifteen years of it and was facing the prospect of many more when Katherine had gone, as she and Edward were residing with us only until they decided where to make their own home. My mother didn’t so much converse as think aloud about household matters or merely relay new
s of neighbours and relatives (someone’s illness, someone else’s difficult pregnancy). I had no idea how Katherine managed to listen so intently, or at least give the impression of doing so. In every other way, too, she was what my mother would have wanted, making light of work around the house and making the treasured eldest son happy, or so it then seemed.

  My mother continued to keep her distance from her, though, but that left Katherine and me to work together, which suited me fine. Since my sister-in-law’s arrival, I was no longer just my mother’s helper or the girls’ supervisor, and I looked forward to each new day. Perhaps, I felt, the reason for my mother’s reticence with Katherine was that although Katherine was a married lady, she had yet to become a family lady: she’d stepped up from her girlhood but not yet stepped properly into the world that was my mother’s, to run a household and rear children. Katherine inhabited my world at least as much as she inhabited my mother’s, although I had to remind myself that her presence in mine was a mere visitation, in that she’d soon be moving on.

  At that time of year, my mother’s domain was the dairy-house: she was an expert cheesemaker and didn’t need anyone’s help. She should have been teaching the technique to Elizabeth and me – it was something, in time, that we’d need to know – but never seemed able to bring herself to risk any of our sheep’s milk. It had rankled with me before Katherine arrived, but from then on I wasn’t much bothered. Although I wasn’t making cheese, I was in charge of the daily cleaning of the dairy-house, which was exacting in its own way, spotlessness being crucial to the success of each batch. Elizabeth, Dottie and Margie were forbidden to go anywhere near.

  It was my job: ‘Jane’s thorough,’ my mother used to say, ‘Jane can be trusted.’ She did make noises to suggest that Katherine wasn’t expected to get down on her hands and knees with scrubbing brushes, but she must’ve known that her daughter-in-law was joining me there. I did try to put Katherine off, simply because I felt I should, but she wouldn’t have it; ‘I’m fine,’ she’d say, and, ‘Let me,’ and I chose to see it as her wanting my company, which might well have been true – but at least as true, upon reflection, was that she liked to be busy.

  My mother jealously guarded her still room, too, but in that case the role of assistant was most definitely the preferable one. As her assistants, Katherine and I spent a lot of time, that summer, in the gardens, collecting the herbs and flowers – rose petals, lavender heads, sage leaves, sprigs of thyme – from which she distilled the various deceptively clear, headily fragrant waters for cooking, medicines and washing.

  When we weren’t picking herbs and flowers, we were harvesting fruits and vegetables, all of which suited Katherine fine because she loved the sunshine. Honey-coloured, she didn’t burn. I did, but she’d usher me into the arbour for some shade while she carried on; I’d sit there doing whatever I could to be useful, podding peas, perhaps, while we continued our conversation. Until she’d come to Wolf Hall, I’d only had my mother’s wittering to suffer, or Elizabeth’s complaints and demands, or the little ones’ sillinesses, which was why, to me, Katherine’s chatter seemed wide-ranging and unpredictable.

  Once, I remember, she rose in a tangle of gown from onion-harvesting to wonder aloud, ‘What if we girls wore doublets and hose? What would that be like? We’d be—’ and she frowned to contemplate it, ‘Well, we’d be all legs, wouldn’t we.’ And, buttoning down her smile, she confided, ‘I tell you, Janey, I thank God every minute of every day that no one sees my knees.’ Was she serious? I had no idea. Could her knees be quite so bad? Could any knees be quite so bad? It’s hard to believe, now, but such talk was unconventional – daring, even – for the Seymour household. No one in my family talked about hose – repaired them, yes, endlessly, but never mentioned them – nor the look of legs. Well, Thomas probably did, but never in my earshot.

  On another occasion: ‘Is God really watching us all the time, d’you think? I mean, really all the time? Even when we’re doing this?’ She pulled a face to show her frank opinion of such divine time-wasting, and, provocatively, with her eyes heavenwards, tipped a handful of our newly picked peas into her mouth. We Seymours weren’t overly observant, but none of us would’ve dared question how God spent His time, nor filched any of the household’s peas.

  And once, when the chapel bell began ringing for prayers, she glanced up from the strawberry patch to ask me, ‘Have you ever heard that bell ring when you’ve known – known for absolute certain – that there’s no one there?’ I didn’t think I had. ‘Oh, well, I have,’ she said, as I’d known she would. ‘Back at home,’ she clarified, ‘Our bell back at home. Once. In the middle of the night.’ Her coppery eyes were round with intrigue. ‘And I lay there thinking, Please make it stop, please, please stop it, but at the same time thinking, Let it go on and on and on.’

  ‘It was probably bats.’ I hated to sound boring but the fact was that it was almost certainly bats.

  She shook her head. ‘It was a regular tolling.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone else hear it?’

  She shrugged. ‘They never said, but they wouldn’t, would they.’

  She was superstitious about birds, too. When I first saw her recoil from a hopping blackbird, hand to heart, I assumed she’d been startled, but then she said in all seriousness, with a shudder, ‘Souls of the dead, doing their penance.’

  It was an old belief, I knew, the kind that Moll would hold. I said nothing, but I did wonder how Edward would react if he heard something like that from her.

  For Antony, our new family member was heaven-sent: a kindred spirit. He regaled her with the preposterous questions that preoccupied him, confronting her by hopping from foot to foot, fervent and insistent, almost indignant at the enormity of the topics that – he was convinced – required examination: Which would you rather have as a pet, a leopard or an elephant? Would you rather drown or burn to death?

  She tried very hard not to laugh at her own helplessness, cornered, and at Antony’s fierceness. Her sidelong glances in my direction would have the same effect on me, although when I’d had to endure his interrogations alone, I’d tended to find them exasperating. Adore him though I did, I found him hard work, although I’ve since come to regret ever having rolled my eyes, ever having sighed and looked into the middle distance. Katherine had never had a baby sibling, so, for her, Antony’s tenacity was novel. Who knew, though, why he ever bothered to fire his precious questions at her, because, to his mind, he already had the answers; he was bursting with them and he’d unleash them on her as soon as she’d offered her own.

  ‘But a leopard would

  ‘But, but, but . . . But then you’d . . . And what if . . . ? And I’d . . .’

  And so whatever she’d ventured in reply was immediately dismissed and she was put firmly back in her place, which only delighted her further.

  On St John’s eve, Antony was bothering us when we were helping with preparations in the kitchen. Katherine and I only helped with cooking for special occasions, but there were a fair few special occasions that summer because my mother was keen to show her off. Harry’s Barbara’s family was to be joining us for the feast of St John. The kitchen was quiet, it being a fast day, and Bax was always well organised in advance of a feast so that he could take a brief fortifying break before the busy day itself. Katherine had set Margie making little marzipan hedgehogs, using slivered almonds for their spikes and raisins for their eyes and snouts, and Margie had embraced her responsibilities: that after-noon, she was Confectioner Extraordinaire, and we, making mere gingerbread medallions, were beneath her.

  Antony had extracted a promise that he could stamp out our rounds, and while he waited for us to mix and roll the mixture, he took the opportunity to pass on some of his wisdom regarding dragons (‘They’re not all huge, you know; some of them are not much bigger than dogs’). Dragons led him to St George, and, jovially, he reported, ‘Thomas says that when that maiden was cut free from the stake, she was probably just fussing about her hair
,’ before honouring us with his impression of a preening girl.

  ‘Antony,’ I warned; it was reflex, taking him to task for disrespect of a biblical story. It was what my mother would have done, so I did it, because, like it or not, I was still, back then, very much my mother’s daughter.

  He took offence with enthusiasm. ‘What? I didn’t say it; Thomas did.’

  ‘But you don’t have to repeat it.’

  After a brief sulk, he muttered, pointedly, ‘Saint Antony put his sister in a nunnery.’

  Katherine was delighted by the transparency of the threat. ‘Yes, but that was so he could go off and be a monk.’

  Antony was thrilled again. ‘He was the first-ever monk,’ he crowed, ‘and the best-ever monk! Out in the middle of the desert, fighting off all those wild beasts that were really the Devil in disguise – the lions and wolves, the snakes and the scorpions

  ‘I think,’ she glanced at me to check, ‘he just laughed at them, actually. Isn’t that right?’ she asked me. ‘Isn’t that the story?’

  As far as I remembered, it was.

  Antony protested, ‘But that’s still really brave! I mean, would you laugh at a lion?’

  ‘Probably not,’ she admitted. ‘Not unless it told me a joke.’

  He raced on, ‘Saint Katherine was going to get bashed to death, tied up on a wheel and bashed—’

  ‘Talk of the Devil,’ she said, and I glanced up to see Thomas coming in.

  ‘Where’s the bread for the dogs?’ he demanded. ‘Where does Bax keep it?’

  We didn’t know.

  Belatedly, he remembered himself: even if it was acceptable that he should address his own siblings in this way – which, frankly, it wasn’t – there was no excuse for such a brusque manner with his new sister-in-law. He mustered a smile for her and said, ‘Katherine,’ by way of apology and greeting, then inclined his head towards the gingerbread mixture. ‘Getting your hands dirty, I see.’