A Court Affair. Emily Purdy

Cumnor Place, Berkshire, near Oxford Sunday, September 8, 1560

      “What is it, love?” Pirto, her face all concern, asks, tugging gently at my sleeve as she kneels beside me. “You look so sad! Is it the pain again?”

      “I’m all right, Pirto,” I sigh with a wan, halfhearted little smile, “but I shall not go to the fair today. No, no”—I stop the protests forming on her lips—“you and the others go, and have a good time today. I insist, I will hear no argument. Take my purse, and bring me back some cakes and cider and hair ribbons—a whole rainbow of hair ribbons. Spend whatever you like, and tell me all about it when you come back tonight. Do this for me as you love me, Pirto. I have a sudden craving for solitude. I can’t really explain it, but I want to be all by myself in a quiet house, where I can truly hear myself think and listen to what my mind is saying. Please!” I take both her hands in mine. “There is so little anyone can do for me now, but you can do this.”

      “My Lady, I like not to leave you alone …” Pirto frowns, and the lines on her face seem to bite a little deeper.

      “It is just for one day, Pirto, one peaceful day, and I shall be fine,” I promise her. “Please, do this one thing for me! And tell the others to go—make them go if you must—but just give me this one quiet Sunday all to myself.”

      Pirto sighs and gives in, as I know she will. “Very well, My Lady!” Then, with a creak of her aged knees, she stands and begins bustling about, sending down to the kitchen for a platter of food, covered so that the sight and smell of it will not sicken me, just to be there in the event my appetite should awake and stir its sluggish self, and bringing medicines, water, wine, a basin, and ginger suckets to combat the nausea, and putting them all on the table beside my chair so that I will have anything I might need within ready reach. And also, at my request, she brings the pretty red and gold enamelled comfit box filled with sweet and sour cherry suckets Tommy Blount brought me last time he rode out from London. Though I cannot bring myself to eat them—my stomach raises a sword of threatening protest each time I think to try one—I love looking at them, the candied cherries glowing in neat rows like a jeweller’s tray of round, perfect cabochon rubies, waiting for me to make a selection.

      Voices raised in argument outside my door suddenly penetrate my reverie, and, even though Pirto hastens out to try to quiet them, I lever myself up and follow her out into the Long Gallery, where watery sun pours in through the gabled windows to pool upon the cold stone floor, trying vainly to warm it, like an ardent lover wooing an icy maid.

      “But what nonsense is this?” Mrs Oddingsells demands, fluttering the note I had sent late the night before to be given to her upon arising. Her bosom heaves in such a mighty and zealous show of hypocritical outrage that I fear her breasts will burst like two cannonballs from her too-tightly-laced mulberry silk bodice, and I step back lest I suffer a blackened eye. “Sunday is the Lord’s Day, Lady Dudley, and all God-fearing people should be at home and at their prayers and reading their Bibles, not gallivanting at the fair! And certainly it is no day for gentlefolk like us to mingle with the sort of low, common people who are likely to frequent a fair upon a Sunday; no doubt they will be very loud and vulgar and given to drunken and lewd disport and excess!” She wrinkles her nose as if the very thought of such folk conjures up a stink as powerful as a cart heaped high with rotten eggs.

      Her false façade of morality makes me so mad, I want to tell her that if she is so worried about offending the Lord, she shouldn’t be wearing her bodices cut so low, but I’m too tired, and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to stand there bickering like hens who all want the only cock in the henhouse, so I let it go.

      “Humph!” Mrs Forster sniffs, and she gives a smart tug to her new goose-turd green and yellow bodice and tucks a stray wisp of hair back beneath her lace-bordered white linen cap. “Put on airs and play pious as you will, Lizzy Oddingsells, but I have been going to country fairs all my life, many upon a Sunday, and enjoyed them every one, and my blood is just as good as yours is, if not better, and you’ll burn in Hell just the same whether you go to the fair or stay home with a whole stack of Bibles—for being my husband’s whore!” And with those words and a flounce of her green and yellow skirts, she’s off with her nose in the air to gather her children and prepare them for a day at the fair, determined to enjoy herself all the more to spite Mrs Oddingsells, and I know that for many days to come she will bubble like a pot boiling over every chance she gets about what a fine time she had at the fair while some falsely pious hypocrites with jumped-up notions about themselves stayed at home.

      “Mrs Oddingsells is right. Sunday is the Lord’s Day”—like a judge, the grey-haired and grey-clad Mrs Owen solemnly weighs in, gravely intoning the words as if each one were as heavy as a granite boulder—“and a day meant for contemplation and prayer. After church I shall return to my chamber and spend the day quietly with my Bible.”

      “But you must go!” I insist, turning first to one and then to the other, fighting the urge to fall on my knees and actually beg them. Mrs Owen, I could bear—I know she would not bother me—but I do not want Mrs Oddingsells about. I want peace and quiet and privacy, not prying eyes and forced companionship when I would have none. And I know that if she stays home, forced to make do with her own company, Mrs Oddingsells will soon be so bored that she will gladly suffer any company, even mine; that woman would sit down and drink a tankard with Satan himself if it would save her from being alone half an hour. “I promise, you will have a good time, and there is no harm in it! I have been to many a fair on Sunday, and my soul has suffered no harm from it! And it is not nearly so rough and rowdy as you imagine; the common folk are jolly and good, and most are well-behaved.”

      Mrs Owen turns and sweeps her glacial grey eyes over me in a glance so cold, it makes me shiver. Her voice drips with disdain when she begins to speak to me. “You are mortally ill and abandoned by your husband, Lady Dudley, a man who leaves you alone to die of an incurable and agonisingly painful disease while he goes to court to dance and fornicate with the Queen. And, when last I looked, my fine lady, your name was not on the lease to Cumnor, nor is your lord’s. You have no home of your own and are merely a guest in this house, so what makes you think that you can give orders here, or to presume that God is not punishing you with your suffering for some transgression you have committed, mayhap even all those fairs you have attended on Sundays?”

      I gasp and reel back as if she had just struck me. If Pirto had not caught me, I surely would have fallen flat. I stare back at her, aghast, with tears of anger and surprise welling in my eyes. My chin quivers, but, as is often the case with me, I feel myself helpless and tongue-tied in the face of such bluntness and cruelty.

      Ignoring me, Mrs Oddingsells turns to Mrs Owen and asks if perchance she would like to dine with her.

      “Perhaps you would like to dine with me instead, Lizzy?” Mrs Owen counters with an invitation of her own. “My cook is preparing a fine suckling pig stuffed with apples and pears and raisins. The dear woman spoils me so; but it is far too rich and full a repast for a lonely old woman like me.”

      “Gladly!” Mrs Oddingsells beams. “Many thanks, Mrs Owen; you are an angel in disguise who has come down to earth to shower blessings upon me!”

      “And perhaps later we might have a game of cards?” Mrs Owen suggests as, arm-in-arm, they turn and start to walk away, down the Long Gallery, heading for the stairs. “Though since it is Sunday, all the winnings must go into the church’s poor box, of course.”

      “Of course!” Mrs Oddingsells readily agrees. “I would not have it any other way! I would not feel right even touching a deck of cards on a Sunday unless some poor soul were to reap some benefit from it. Win or lose, I know I shall have helped some poor soul in need.”

      “You are welcome to join us, of course, Lady Dudley,” Mrs Owen calls back over her shoulder. “If you find solitude weighs too heavily upon you, you will know where to find us. You know, Lizzy, I am not the superstitious sort,” I hear her say in a confiding tone as, arm-in-arm like the oldest, dearest friends, they walk away from me, “but my maid is,