Anne of the Fens Read online

  When I looked in Mother’s Venetian mirror, I was so disappointed at the face that stared back at me. I would not want that person as a friend. Then I tried smiling, and it was not so bad.

  There were more interesting things to talk about than our looks. As we got into bed, I told Patience what had happened, about chasing Sarah, the man who danced with me, and about the play — as much of the story as I had heard. The more I told her, the more I wanted to know the ending.

  “What do you think might have happened at the friar’s when they went to get married?” I asked.

  Patience’s body went stiff beside me in the bed.

  “I do not know, but I know it is a sin for women to display themselves in a public play.”

  I said she knew that the part was probably played by a young man, but she said nothing and turned away from me in the bed.

  “Someone in the crowd said it was by Shakespeare. By now I have looked at all the books in the library and there are none by Shakespeare. How do you think I can find the ending?” I ignored her crossness.

  “I do not know, and if I did, God knows I should not help you.”

  Several minutes passed. Then Patience said, “I have heard Simon and Father speak of Shakespeare.”

  “What did they say?” I sat up.

  “You are pulling the blankets off me.”

  I covered her with the blankets again, and she continued, “They said that the plays had humor if you overlooked the Godlessness.”

  I could get no more out of her. As I began to fall asleep, feeling slightly feverish, I was startled when Patience sat up in bed. Now it was I who had no blankets.

  “Selfish Anne!” Her voice was loud. “All the problems we are all facing and you want to read a heathen book about romance.”

  “What do you mean, the problems we are all facing?” I said sleepily. When Patience got very angry, it was usually after she had thought for a while.

  “Did you listen to a word of the sermon today? Do you know how angry the King will be if the Earl and Father do not pay the tax?”

  “But the King’s war and the tax are unjust. He disbanded Parliament because he knew they would not vote for the tax. Nobody should pay the tax.”

  “The Earl and Father will be arrested and go to prison. We will have no father. Think about that for a while.”

  I had seldom seen Patience, who always saw the good in me, so angry. I patted her arm and said yes, I was a selfish, thoughtless girl and of course I did not want Father and the Earl to be arrested. But she was still angry.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE NEXT MORNING I was aware of Patience getting out of bed and slipping downstairs, the sun strong in the casement window. I woke again later to find her hovering over me and the sun already past the window. I groaned and turned over, every muscle in my body aching.

  “Fen fever again,” Patience said, without the anger of the previous night. She did not say what we were both thinking, that I was being punished for my selfish thoughts.

  Where we live many have fen fever, and some say it is due to the mosquitoes that swarm about the swampy ground. Once one gets the illness it is a part of life forever, bringing every few weeks or months a bout of high fever, trembling, and aching muscles. I find that, for me, it is brought on by fatigue. As I had chased Sarah into the fair and stood for hours in the church, I had worried that I would get sick.

  Patience brought a wet cloth for my forehead and a flagon of beer for my thirst. She said that she would tell Mother I could not do chores, and she would tell Simon I would not come to the library for tutoring. The family was used to my illnesses.

  Mother sent Marianne, the maid to the Earl’s sister Arbella, to care for me. I loved talking to Marianne, as she knew all the gossip of the castle. She brought me wormwood in a tiny jar with a small wooden spoon. It tasted foul but it usually helped a bit with the aching. As I lay there, her long blond hair brushing over my face as she spooned medicine into me, something light struck me on the cheek. I looked down at a small wooden crucifix hanging from Marianne’s neck. She saw it herself, jumped away, put the cross back inside her chemise, and turned a dull red.

  “Marianne!”

  “Are you going to tell?”

  I did not answer.

  She began to pace, head bowed over folded hands. Now that I knew it was there I could see the crucifix bouncing inside against her chemise. “Nobody knows. They would throw me out if they knew. I am a fine worker, I care for Arbella’s things as though they were gold, I coddle her in every way, I—”

  “I know.” I smiled at her, and she stopped pacing.

  Everyone knew Marianne worked hard. I asked her how she had deceived us, and she sat on the bed, took a breath, and began her story. She said that her father was a Puritan, which I had assumed, as he came to services regularly.

  “Father fell in love with my mother and only found she was a Catholic later. He married her, regardless, as long as she told no one. When I was a child I came upon her praying with a crucifix. The more she told me about the Catholic faith, the more I wanted it for myself. She has taken me to secret services. The castle chapel and the church across the way — they are so bare. It honors God to show beautiful pictures and statues of Him, to have crosses and gold, and song and splendor in a church.”

  The chapel in the castle and the village church across the way were as bare as any Puritan could want. The village church, which had been built near the castle some two hundred years before, was big, though four of its size would have fit into the Boston church we had attended yesterday, and it had probably contained statues and pictures and crosses, which Puritans destroyed. Now, the only color in the gray of stone was the windows. I did love to see the light coming through the ones in the south, staining the stone floors yellow and red.

  “All that display distracts us from awareness of Him.”

  I had heard this so many times I said it without thought. But there was a niggling echo of her argument in my mind. “Splendor” was a lovely word.

  “I won’t give you away,” I decided, “but you must tell me everything about the services.”

  “With pleasure.”

  She began to tell of priests dressed in robes of purple and gold with large gold crosses upon their chests, and velvet hats upon their heads, and the smell of incense in the air. I felt as I had at the fair, torn between the delights of the senses and knowing that such delights were sinful.

  I wanted to know about confession.

  “If you can gain forgiveness for all your sins, does that mean you can do whatever you want?

  “No. You must repent, truly, in your heart, or God will not forgive you.”

  Marianne left soon after. I struggled out of bed and went to my little window. The sun was still shining sharp on the red brick of the castle walls. It was my earliest memory, the red brick of the castle glinting in the sun. Beauty. The play about Romeo and Juliet was beautiful. Beautiful things could be sinful but surely they did not have to be.

  What to think about Catholicism?

  Many people had taught me it was evil — Father, Mother, Simon, Reverend Cotton. Perhaps while the Catholic Church was evil, the people who practiced it were not all evil. Perhaps I could teach Marianne. I realized it was she who had been teaching and I the one learning.

  I returned to bed, shivering and sweating, and passed in and out of sleep. In my waking periods, I thought about religion and the play. Shakespeare was not a Catholic, but he was no Puritan. I think he had no religion, and lived in a Godless fashion. There had been lewd puns and rough humor in what I had heard at the fair.

  The Earl had a wonderful library, containing hundreds of books. Not all of the books were by Puritan authors, but there were none that spoke against Puritanism.

  I would certainly not be able to get back to the fair. To find the ending of the story, I needed to find the book. The only possibility was Simon, but could I manage to persuade him to tell me? And would he tell Father that I had
asked?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NEXT DAY, when the light came through the window, I felt less achy and my forehead no longer burned. I rose with Patience and went with her to morning prayers in the chapel. How small and bare the chapel was, I thought. Four of its size could have fit into St. Botolph’s, in Boston, where we attended services. After our breakfast of bread and milk, Mother said that I could spend the day in the library. One advantage of being sickly was that I had fewer chores and could spend more time reading and talking with Simon.

  The castle had the same floor plan on each of its four floors, a huge central room, surrounded by smaller rooms, and small round rooms at the corners where the turrets were. The servants lived in the basement. The first floor, the grandest, was where the Earl entertained and held important events, like the wedding of his sister Arbella. The second floor held the chapel, Father’s office where he heard complaints from the tenants of the estate, and the library in the large central room. We lived on the third, and the Earl’s family lived on the top.

  There were not enough books in the world to fill the second floor library entirely, but the whole north side of the room had shelves and shelves of books. There was a broad carved table of dark oak running halfway the width of the room facing the shelves, where Simon — my father’s assistant and my tutor — was sitting that morning, his dark head poring over one thick volume, with others opened every which way around him.

  “Greetings. Feeling better? You look pale as a dewberry.”

  I made a face at him. I had known Simon for four years, since I was eleven and he twenty, almost twice my age. He was handsome, tall, and well built — with wide shoulders and a narrow waist. He had fine, dark eyes.

  In the past year or so, when I had started noticing men as men, I had thought of Simon in a different way. He was closer to my age now, it seemed, but he still acted only like a tutor. Sometimes I tried to flirt a little, or wear something pretty when I was going to meet him, but he did not notice at all. He knew so much he was always interesting to talk with, though.

  “How are the Punic Wars coming?” he asked me, motioning me to the short three-legged stool across the table from him.

  I had been reading one of Father’s favorite books, Raleigh’s History of the World. Father said it had taken Raleigh fifteen years in prison to write it, and I could spend a few months on it. I had not finished the pages Simon had assigned me and I wanted to distract him. I also wanted to talk to him about what Marianne had told me, though I knew I had to be careful how I did it.

  “Please, Simon, Mother says if we do not pay the King’s tax we may be arrested. I think, then, we must pay it. What do you think?”

  “It is an unlawful tax. The beetle-headed dwarf wants only to fund his war in Spain.” Simon always called King Charles a dwarf because he was so short, but over time his language had become more and more insulting.

  “Could you be arrested for calling the King a beetle-headed dwarf?”

  “Possibly. I trust you will not report me.” Simon looked away, slightly embarrassed. I did not usually comment on his foul language toward the King.

  “What if we are arrested?”

  “Your father, the Earl, and I all believe we must act on our principles. Many, many are refusing to pay, and he cannot arrest us all. It is all because of his silly dream to marry the daughter of the Spanish King. He wants revenge for the rejection he received.”

  “Such a romantic story, like a fairy tale, King Charles crossing all of Europe in disguise to find and woo her.” I knew I was making Simon angrier. His face was turning dark.

  “Pah. Please, Anne. Don’t be a silly, sentimental girl. Sometimes I think it is impossible to teach a girl.”

  I wanted to hit him but of course I could not.

  He went on, “What if the King had agreed to her conditions? What if he had become Catholic? England could have burst into civil war.”

  “Is it so bad to be Catholic?” Now I could raise the question in my mind.

  Simon stood up from the table and his voice was loud. “Anne, have you learned nothing from all my teaching, the Reverend Cotton’s teaching, your father’s teaching? What do you mean, is it so bad to be Catholic? You are a Puritan, pledged to purify the corrupt church. That should be the aim of everything we do. Is it so bad to be Catholic? God’s teeth.”

  He went on, even louder. “Don’t you remember our studies of the reign of Bloody Mary, before Elizabeth? How many Puritans did she kill?”

  “At least three hundred.”

  “And how, may I ask?”

  “Many of them were burned alive, in wicker baskets hung over flames.”

  My neck hurt from looking up at him, and I moved my stool back further from the table.

  “I am not an idiot,” I said, trying to sound dignified. “I know what it is to be a Puritan. I know what you are afraid of, that Charles will go back to Catholicism and then Puritans will be burned alive again. I am asking you something different. What I want to know is how about the person who is a Catholic. Is every Catholic a bad person? I don’t think so.”

  “You have found a person who is Catholic and whom you like!” He scowled down at me. “Who is it?”

  I blushed. Simon was so intelligent. I would have to be careful not to give Marianne away. I began to trace the grain of the wood in the oak table with my finger. I gathered my courage and looked up at him. “What if I have? Do you want to send her to the gallows? Is that how good Puritans act towards others? I certainly shall not tell you who it is.”

  He began to pace back and forth. “You are becoming impudent, young woman. Have you been listening to my conversations with your father?”

  “No,” I said honestly.

  “I think we should try to convert Catholics and the King’s Church of Englanders also. Your father feels that is impossible, and we might as well hang them or expel them. Or go somewhere we could leave them all behind.”

  “The New World?” I asked, feeling anxiety in my stomach.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Or Holland.”

  I did not want to think about leaving my country. “I believe that this person is a good person.”

  Simon’s dark eyebrows rose, and his eyes seemed bigger than ever, as he stopped pacing and looked into mine.

  “You must tell me who it is.”

  “I shall not.” I rose to my feet as well. “You don’t trust me enough. I know what is good and bad in people.” As I said it, I knew it was true. “You tutor me, but only to Puritan ideas. I want to read other things. I want to read Shakespeare.” My voice was loud and shrill. I had meant to persuade Simon to help me find Shakespeare, not to challenge him like this.

  “If you are so adult, then see if you can find Shakespeare. You will need the luck of the rabbit to do so.” He looked at me hard, and I thought there was something significant about the rabbit. I knew that the servants said, “White rabbit, white rabbit, white rabbit,” the first day of each month for luck. Did he mean that?

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have said too much already.” He was still angry, and so was I.

  I LEFT THE room, breathing hard and a little red in the face myself. A silly, sentimental girl. Ha! Just because I was interested in men did not mean that I was silly or stupid. I climbed the circular stairs in the corner of the castle, up three flights to the roof. I thought of it as my place. Unless the Earl posted a guard because of some kind of danger, which hardly ever happened, I could be alone there.

  The fens stretched away for miles in all directions. I could see the reeds and grasses close by, with the channels cut through them by men and nature. The distant view was flat as a rich green pancake, with some pieces of forest and farm lands sticking out. Watery places glimmered in the sun, and flocks of birds settled and rose from them. It was a fair day, with clouds scuttling across the sky. The steeple of the church in Boston shimmered faintly, far in the distance. The argument and the three flights had taken their toll, and i
t took a while for the peace of the setting to still my pounding heart.

  I thought about what Simon might have meant, and how I could search for the book. I watched a small puff of dust move toward the castle along the Boston Way.

  The road curved along the Witham River in several places, and trees lined it, so it was hard to make out who was coming. The puff grew larger. It had to be horses or a carriage to raise that much dust. It could be one of the castle villagers coming back from the market, but it was moving too quickly. As far as I knew, the Earl and his family were in the castle. There was also another little puff of dust further behind.

  As I watched, I could make out fast-moving horses and red jackets. I knew what they were. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, slipping on the turns of the stone stairs, to the second floor and Father’s office.

  “Father, the Sheriff’s men are coming,” I gasped.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FATHER WAS ALWAYS organized, which he related to the military background he was always telling us about.

  “Quick, run to the guard house and tell Erik to raise the drawbridge. Then hurry to Simon and tell him to burn any of our papers that could cause trouble. Then go to your mother and tell her to slow them down at the moat. I’ll find the Earl.”

  I ran down the stairs and out the door and across the castle grounds to the moat.

  “Raise the drawbridge,” I said, my voice hoarse to my own ears. Erik, the fat guardsman, lounging, a smell of ale on his breath, looked at me as though I had lost my senses. The moat had not been closed for months, and I was not a person to give him orders.