The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

frightened to lie, and didn’t, except that she begged them not to ask where her original home had been, and clung to the name of Sybil Waters, which the Lanyons had given her. “I walked and walked,” she said, coming to the end of her account. “Miles from Lynmouth, miles up the East Lyn, trying to find somewhere. All day I walked and then when it got dark, I tried to sleep in a patch of trees, but there were things rustling, and I saw eyes….”

      “Fox or weasel, no doubt,” said Ambrose with a snort. “Christ, girl, you were a fool to run off like that. And leavin’ thy babby!”

      “No one’ll hurt Stephen. They’ll look after him in Lynmouth,” said Sybil. “But I can’t go back. I won’t go back! I’d rather walk into the sea and finish it all. I was used as a slave, just a slave, not a penny in wages and nothing was going to change, ever, for the rest of my life!”

      “All right, be calm,” said Ambrose.

      “We don’t need help in the house,” Bess said. “Wouldn’t mind help with the milkin’ and the dairy. You any good at that?”

      “I can milk and make butter,” offered Sybil, who had occasionally done so at Allerbrook. “But can I have a proper job? With a wage, and if anyone wants to marry me, can I say yes?”

      “What do you think this here place is?” Ambrose enquired. “It b’ain’t no dungeon. From what ’ee’s told us and the way thee speaks, our farmhands won’t be thy kind of bridegroom. But work, and ’ee’ll be paid, only there’s to be no more gettin’ thyself into trouble. We don’t stand for that here. Decent folk, we are. Today ’ee’d better take some rest. Got any clothes apart from that grubby lot ’ee’s wearin’?”

      “I had some in a bundle….” Sybil looked confused.

      “I’ve got it here,” said Bess. “The bundle, I mean. It wur with her in the hay.”

      “Then ’ee’d best change, take a bit of rest and wash all them messy clothes,” said Ambrose. “Tomorrow, we’ll see.”

      “She’s at a farm called Stonecrop, just above Porlock, on the west side,” said Francis, coming into the dairy where Jane and Eleanor were skimming cream. He was holding yet another letter from Katherine in his hand. “She got herself taken on as a dairymaid there, it seems. She told them that Katherine treated her like a slave. She’s still calling herself Sybil Waters.”

      “The mistress is furious,” said Perkins from the doorway behind Francis. “Says she won’t have Mistress Sybil back, that she never used her as a slave. She says she cared for Sybil like a daughter and she can hardly believe in such ingratitude. She’ll keep the boy, Stephen. Seems Master Owen thinks he might be trained up as a sailor….”

      “I wouldn’t agree to have him back here in any case,” said Francis.

      “Well, it doesn’t arise,” said Perkins. “But the mistress says she’ll have naught to do with Mistress Sybil and the Stonecrop people are welcome to her.”

      “How was she found?” Jane asked.

      “I found her, mistress. I’d been riding out each day, first this direction, then that, and eventually I came across the place. It’s in Culbone parish—there’s a tiny little hamlet and a little church, both called Culbone, not far away, down in the woods toward the sea. The farm’s up on the edge of the moors, though, away from the woods. Bleak kind of place. She looked tired,” he said with some compassion, “and I reckon she works as hard there as she ever did with us, but she told me she was happy and that she was being paid. I suppose that’s a point. She can go to Porlock now and again and buy herself the sort of gewgaws women like.”

      “Francis,” pleaded Jane, “couldn’t Sybil come home?”

      Francis flushed an angry red and Eleanor said, “Better not. At least we know that Sybil is safe with respectable people.”

      “Quite. I’ve said I won’t have her back and I keep my word,” Francis said coldly. “As for you, Jane, you should put your mind to your own future. And if you don’t like it, blame Sybil. If she had behaved herself, I wouldn’t be sending you to court. One sister there is an investment, but two would be an extravagance. However, as things are, it’s your duty to me.”

      Jane, also recognizing the signs of Francis’s temper, said no more, but that night she knelt by her bed and once more prayed that no court vacancy would ever arise.

      For some time, it seemed that her prayers were still being heard, for no vacancy came about and in late October the news reached them that the queen had borne the king the son he wanted, and had then died. There was no queen at court now, needing ladies to attend her.

      Jane, mindful of the health of her soul, did not this time let herself feel glad that another young woman had lost her life. But the sense of freedom, of safety, of knowing for certain that she could not now be sent to the court, was immense.

      Until the January of 1540, when King Henry, for the fourth time, got married.

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      The Icy Welcome 1540

      “There’s Greenwich Palace,” said Ralph Palmer to Jane, standing in the bows of the hired barge which was bringing the party to the court. “See—those towers and turrets—against the sky, to the right.”

      “So we’re nearly there,” said Jane bleakly.

      “I wonder what this new Queen Anna is like,” said Dorothy Stone, emerging from the little covered cabin amidships, pulling her furred cloak around her more tightly and thrusting herself determinedly into the conversation, as she had been doing whenever she saw Jane and Ralph in anything like private talk. Jane glanced at her with irritation.

      She had known Ralph all her life, as a kinsman, albeit a distant one. She understood now that their common ancestor had been Ralph’s great-grandfather and Jane’s great-great-grandfather. Their cousinship was therefore remote and Ralph was certainly handsome, but the simple fact that they had known each other since childhood was enough to make Jane regard him as a brother rather than a possible suitor.

      She knew, too, that his family, especially his stern father, Luke, and the wealthy London cousin, Sir Edmund Flaxton, to whom she owed her appointment to court, intended him to make a grand marriage or at least a moneyed one, and Ralph would not cross his family’s wishes. The Sweetwaters were not as wealthy as they used to be and certainly were nowhere near as rich as the Stones. Ralph’s father was acquainted with Thomas Stone and Francis had told her, before she left home, that there was talk of betrothing Ralph to Dorothy.

      “Once Dorothy has had a little court burnish, of course,” Francis said. “She’s a pallid little thing and hardly ever has a word to say for herself. You and she will travel there together.”

      “Very well,” said Jane without enthusiasm.

      “I can’t escort you,” Francis said. “I have too much to see to here, but Dr. Spenlove and Eleanor will accompany you. Dorothy’s father is going with her and Ralph is going to court, too, and will also be in the party. Now, Jane, make sure you don’t—er—upset the plans for Ralph and Dorothy in any way. You know what I mean.”

      She knew perfectly well what he meant, but could not see that merely talking to Ralph, as she had talked to him a thousand times already, was going to upset anything. Dorothy’s attitude was embarrassing and a nuisance. Well, it was cold out here on the river anyway. Quietly she withdrew to the cabin in Dorothy’s stead.

      It was January, a terrible month for travelling. They should have set out sooner but their departure had been delayed by storms, and the journey had been slow. Floods after heavy rain had repeatedly forced them out of their way, and then the weather had turned bitter, with winds that penetrated the sturdiest riding cloaks as though they were made of tissue paper.

      When they left their horses at Kingston