The House Of Allerbrook. Valerie Anand

her to undress. “I’m supposed to be a tirewoman but just now a tired woman is what I feel like.”

      “So do I. I hope we can both rest a little tomorrow,” said Jane, much concerned.

      “I heard that the king was there tonight. Did you dance with him?”

      “Yes,” said Jane gloomily. “And played music for him and the queen afterward.”

      A pattern which was to be repeated time after time throughout the weeks that followed, with Henry’s beefy hands growing, it seemed, hotter and more embarrassingly enquiring during every dance, and Henry’s compliments, on her footwork, her music and her appearance, more lavish and disquieting. Until the second of May, when King Henry kissed her.

      I’ve been the biggest fool in Christendom, Sybil told herself as she scrambled out of bed and into her clothes and down the stairs of Stonecrop farmhouse, in order to plunge out into the cold and dark of a February morning to feed the sow and the poultry before breakfast.

      She had thought she was to be a dairymaid, but Stonecrop was short of hands and everyone seemed to do everything, as required. After breakfast she and Alison must muck out the stable and byre, and pile the steamy result on the enormous midden. Every kind of bodily waste, animal or human, went onto that midden, and before very long, Alison had said, they’d be taking the stinking stuff to the fields in baskets on their backs, and spreading it to fertilize the earth before the spring ploughing.

      She seemed to be permanently wet, cold and filthy. At Lynmouth she had worked but indoors, at least. And what was happening to Stephen all this time? She’d thought she didn’t care about him, but now she was constantly wondering how he was, whether he missed her, was looking for her, crying for her…

      I don’t wish he’d never been born, said Sybil to herself, shovelling horse dung. I just wish that I hadn’t.

      CHAPTER TEN

      Fearful Majesty 1540

      Court life did of course have its good moments. Jane attended a tournament and marvelled at the immense horses and heavily armoured riders as they charged each other, separated by a brightly coloured barrier but reaching across it with lethal-looking lances. She also liked walking in the grounds with the Queen and enjoyed dancing when King Henry wasn’t there. When he was, he never failed to partner her at least once.

      Peter Carew sometimes danced with her, which was much more agreeable, or strolled beside her when queen and courtiers went walking. It was from Peter that she learned that she was not imagining the unfriendly looks she kept receiving from the Duke of Norfolk.

      “He saw before the wedding that this marriage was going to be a catastrophe,” Carew said. “And straightaway he started getting notions about his niece. The gossip is that he’d put her into Henry’s bed himself if he got the chance. As a mistress or even a wife, if Henry manages to get out of this toil he’s in—and he might, from all I hear.”

      Jane had heard the same thing, mainly from Hanna, who sometimes, worriedly, talked to the English ladies.

      “The king sometimes sleeps in her chamber,” Hanna had said, “but all he does is kiss her good-night, and then kiss her good-morning and leave her. On the first night he fumbled about in a way she did not like, but from what she says, it came to naught and he doesn’t do even that now. She says she hopes for children, but, poor soul, she does not know how children are made. We do not tell her, for that is for the King to do. Besides, it is no use for her to know—things—if he will not do his part. We are anxious for her.”

      It seemed to Jane that the few happy occasions would always be overshadowed by things that were not happy at all. The miserable royal marriage was one of these. Her homesickness was another and she was made uncomfortable by Dorothy’s obvious resentment because the king never solicited her hand in dancing. Carew didn’t either. Dorothy, in fact, was a wallflower.

      Matters worsened rapidly when the court moved upstream to London and Whitehall Palace for the May Day celebrations.

      It was Jane’s first experience of the strange mixture of order and chaos which was King Henry’s court on the move. Instructions were exact. All personal belongings must be clearly labelled. Porters would take everything to the barges that were to transport baggage to Whitehall. Only the most important people could take furniture and bedding and hangings; the rest must accept what they found awaiting them at the other end.

      Jane made sure that her goods were carefully labelled, but Lisa panicked slightly at the idea of their things being borne away to be piled up in the barge with other hampers and bundles, and prayed aloud that nothing would get lost or broken. However, the journey, though chilly, was accomplished without incident. But when the maids of honour had been shown to their new dormitory and the baggage was brought in, Jane’s biggest hamper wasn’t there.

      “Oh, madam, I knew something would go wrong with your things. I knew it!” wailed Lisa.

      “Well, it isn’t your fault,” Jane said soothingly. “Or mine, either,” she added, frowning. “My brother painted my name on all my hampers and boxes before I left home and I stuck two labels on each piece of luggage, as well. I begged some glue from the Greencloth room. They keep it so that the kitchen staff can mend pots and pans and so on. Look, you can see them on the other things. I can’t understand it.”

      Appealed to, Mistress Lowe said there was a room where unlabelled baggage was put until it was claimed, but when Jane and Lisa followed her directions, with difficulty, since Whitehall was a tangled maze of courtyards and separate buildings, they found that the room was now part of an extended Greencloth office and no one seemed to know where mislaid baggage had been stowed. A little later Peter Carew, finding Lisa and Jane down on the landing stage distractedly peering around, asked what they were about.

      “I wondered if a hamper of mine had been left here by mistake,” Jane said. “It hasn’t been brought to our dormitory.”

      “There’s a room where unidentified luggage is put,” said Carew comfortingly. “Come. I’ll show you.”

      “We’ve been there,” said Jane. “But it’s being used for something else—there are clerks in it.”

      “I don’t mean that one, I mean the new one. It’s been changed. No one ever remembers to tell anyone anything in this court! Details are always going wrong. Come with me.”

      He led them to the right place, and the missing hamper was there. “The labels must have been torn off by accident, madam,” Lisa said. “I saw the way the porters just toss things about. Disgraceful, it is.”

      “But both labels have come off—and they’ve been ripped off,” said Jane, examining the hamper. “There are just scraps of them left, and look! Someone’s splashed something over the place where Francis painted my name. It’s been covered over by—well, it looks like ink.”

      “Is there someone at court who doesn’t like you, Mistress Sweetwater?” Carew asked, quite seriously.

      “It’s a woman, if so,” said Lisa. “This is what spiteful women do. And I can put a name to the hussy, as well!”

      “Leave it,” said Jane. “Let’s just take the hamper to the dormitory and not speak of this. I’ve got my property back. Master Carew, I must thank you for your help.”

      “I’m always willing to assist a young lady in distress,” Carew said. He added suddenly and cryptically, “Remember that. Especially if there is spitefulness about.”

      He left them before Jane could ask him what he meant. She asked Lisa instead, as they were carrying the hamper into the empty dormitory. “I don’t understand,” she said in puzzlement.

      “I do,” said Lisa. “And I can put a name to the girl who did it.”

      “Who?”

      Lisa