The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

half-light, as the cards were dealt, Anne employed them to send a secret message to Henry.

      It was one of their private games, this exchange of signals that only they could read. To hold the cards in one’s right hand and pensively flick the leftmost card with the other hand was to say, I love you. For him to run a forefinger slowly and sensually across the edge of the fan of cards was to say, I desire you. I will come tonight. For her to do the same was an invitation. Please come tonight. I will be awake and waiting. For either of them to flick the face of each card in turn with the nail of a forefinger was to reply, You will be welcome or I will come.

      In the course of the evening’s play she fingered the edge of her cards four times, lingeringly, invitingly. But at no point did the king’s small greenish-grey eyes meet her dark ones; at no point did the square bearded face above the slashed velvet doublet show any awareness of her except as a fellow player in the game. Nor did his thick forefinger ever flick the face of any card at all.

      What am I to do? I have borne him one daughter and lost one male infant. He is turning away from me. He had a mistress last year, I know he did, and she wasn’t the first. I will only win him back if I give him a son, and how can I give him a son if he will not make love to me? Or if he can’t?

      The previous night Henry had failed her. She had used every art she could think of to help him, without success. Now it seemed he was refusing even to try. Perhaps he was ashamed. But she was afraid, because she knew he would blame her both for his failure and her own. Her dreadful failure, in his eyes, to produce a prince to follow him.

      He had blamed her openly last night. He had said, “If only you were a real woman. If only you could have a healthy child every year, and half of them sons, like other women! If you were a real woman, I’d be a real man!”

      “I am a real woman!” she had shouted. “What else could I be?”

      “A witch,” said King Henry nastily. “Or a whore.”

      Oh, God, make him come to me tonight and make him able. Let us make a sturdy son. Because if we don’t…

      If we don’t make a son, I shall be blamed and blamed and blamed. I’ve given him a sweet red-haired Tudor daughter, but what use is a daughter? Elizabeth can’t be his heir, any more than her sister Mary can. He told his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, that for a king to have only daughters was the same as being childless altogether. But how can a woman choose whether her babies are boys or girls? Unjust, unjust! I could kill him! Or I could kill God, for denying me this one thing that I need, that he needs, so badly.

      Henry was thinking, Candlelight doesn’t suit her. It suits most women, but it makes her look weird. Like a sorceress. Maybe she is a sorceress. I wanted her so much. I’ve turned the church upside down for her, broken away from the Pope, changed the ritual, started closing down monasteries…not that the monks don’t deserve it, fat, luxurious layabouts that most of them are. But how did she make me want her to that point, just the same? Was it witchery? If she doesn’t stop fingering those cards, I’ll get up and walk out of this room. We need another signal. One that says No, stop it.

      I’m getting tired of her, and my other queen is still alive. Two unwanted queens and no son. Was ever a man so accursed?

      CHAPTER FOUR

      A Port in a Storm 1535

      “There’s no room here for idle hands,” Katherine said to Sybil a matter of minutes after their arrival in Lynmouth.

      Sybil had made the journey on a pillion behind a groom and they had travelled slowly, but she was tired. By the time they were on the steep track down into the little harbour village of Lynmouth at the base of its towering cliffs, she was longing for a quiet bedchamber with a cup of wine to restore her.

      At the door of the house, just before the foot of the hill, they dismounted and servants came out to deal with panniers and horses. The main door opened straight into a big panelled parlour. Sybil had seen it before. When her parents were alive, the Allerbrooks had once or twice attended Christmas revels at the Lanyons’ home. Now, however, she paused uncertainly, wondering where to go, until Katherine tapped her arm and said, “Follow me.”

      The house was old and creaky and tall. Katherine led the way up a steep and somewhat rickety staircase to an attic room. There were no luxuries here, no hearth or bed-hangings. There was a clothespress, a window seat that lifted to reveal a chest below, one small shelf with a candlestick on it and a plain truckle bed with no bedding.

      “Your things will be fetched up presently and I’ll have the bed made up,” Katherine said. “For now, just take off your cloak and hat and leave them here, and then come down to the dining parlour. Do you remember where it is?”

      No rest, then. Not even a wash! She went down to the dining parlour, which led out of the main parlour, and found that food was being set out. She was not, however, to eat anything yet.

      “You can serve us while we eat and leave the other maids free to get on with other things,” Katherine said. Sybil stared at her and that was the moment when Katherine said, “There’s no room here for idle hands. Everyone’s always busy,” she added. “You can eat when we’ve finished.”

      She was presented to the servants as Mistress Sybil Waters, a young widow, a relative, but without means. “We’ve never known anyone called Waters, so as a name it won’t cause confusion,” Owen said.

      Sybil was willing enough to acquiesce, but the groom who had accompanied the party to Allerbrook certainly knew the truth, and she had no doubt that he would soon tell the three maids and the manservant Perkins all about it. If this was a port in a storm, it also promised to be a port in a hostile country.

      The days that followed were harsh. Katherine, however well-bred in society, was less fastidious in private, where she raised her voice whenever she pleased. Only Owen was exempt. His wife shouted at everyone else and handed out frequent slaps, and Sybil was sure that she received more than her fair share. At Allerbrook such things were rare. At Allerbrook, too, people often smiled. If only, in Lynmouth, someone now and then would smile at her. But no one ever did and on top of that, there was the work.

      Rooms must be dusted, clothes mended, onions peeled, loaves shaped, pots stirred, fish gutted, stores counted, floors swept, dishes washed, guests waited on, and Sybil was called upon to perform these tasks, for all the world as though she were a maidservant instead of a kinswoman.

      Owen belonged to a consortium of merchants, but he had a ship of his own and often sailed abroad to buy dyes and spices and bales of silk in person, rather than leave it to agents. He and Idwal were often away from home on trading expeditions, and the first time the two of them set off, Sybil hoped that there might be less to do. She was wrong. Left in command, Katherine became not so much a conscientious housewife as a slave driver.

      When the men were away, she said, that was the time to get some real work done. New shirts must be made for husband and son, and a spell of spring sunshine inspired her to have all the linen in the house, both bed linen and undergarments, thoroughly washed and put out to dry.

      Never before had Sybil been asked to work so long or so hard. At home she sometimes helped in the kitchen and dairy, but she had had time to herself to enjoy books—poetry, travel and devotional works. In the evenings they would all take turns with the lute and there might be dancing or cards or backgammon.

      She had realized that life at court would be different, but there she had hoped to find glamour, to wear fashionable clothes, to attend masques and tournaments. There was no glamour and precious little merriment in her life now. There wasn’t even time to read. She had pushed two books into her panniers, but she had not had a moment to open either of them.

      At times she was so tired that she could scarcely force her feet to walk, and