Anne of the Fens Read online

  “Damnation. By command of the Earl. The Sheriff is coming.”

  He turned pale, and began to work the ropes that raised the bridge.

  I ran back up to find Simon and passed my mother coming down the stairs. Father had already told her about the moat. Simon was no longer in the library, but I found him in his own small office on the second floor. He grasped the problem instantly and began flinging papers every which way. Since it was May, there was no fire in the fireplace. He thrust a pile of papers and a book into my arms and told me to run to Cook’s fire. Again, I sped down the stairs, heading toward the kitchen. It was about a hundred feet from the castle in a building made of gray stone instead of brick. The kitchen was outside the castle, of course, to protect against a fire from the ovens spreading and burning everything down.

  “Where are you going in such a speed, young Anne?” Cook has always treated me like I was her child, and saved special treats for me.

  “No time to talk, just let me throw these things on the fire. The Sheriff is coming.”

  Her smooth broad face crumpled into worry.

  “Ah, what will happen now?”

  Everyone knew of the tax, and that the Earl had not paid it.

  I pushed past Cook and placed Simon’s papers and the book on top of the fire. I hated to burn a precious book, but there was no choice. The flames licked the very top of the hearth, the fire so big it was suspicious in itself. I hoped it would die down before the lawmen came. I left the kitchen and went outside to watch.

  Patience had come out as well. We could hear the Sheriff’s men shouting angrily around the guard house.

  “Open, open, in the name of the law!”

  Patience grabbed my hand and we stood. “Mother has sent Erik away and is managing the ropes herself,” Patience said.

  We could hear Mother crying out to the Sheriff’s men. “It has caught. I cannot loosen it.” She looked helpless.

  “She is magnificent,” Patience said.

  I nodded. I had never admired her more.

  “Has Father come down from seeing the Earl?”

  As I asked, Father emerged from the castle, his arms full. He went into the kitchens and when he came out, without the papers, he called to Erik to go out and lower the drawbridge.

  Patience and I hurried back into the kitchen before Father could redirect us. It was a good listening place, through the open door.

  We did not have to wait long. The Earl emerged from the castle, looking young and ill at ease, with Father at his side. Father handles most difficult situations for him, but no doubt Father had said it would be best if the Sheriff were greeted by the lord of the manor himself. The Earl had put on a robe of maroon velvet trimmed in ermine, which made him look like royalty. It also looked hot, since it was now past noon. I had missed the midday meal, and the sun was high in the sky.

  The Sheriff and his men galloped over the drawbridge, with that huge hollow noise that hoofs make on a bridge. The Earl and Father walked slowly toward them, as though there were no hurry. The Sheriff’s men made a show of stopping suddenly, by drawing the horses around in a circle at the last minute.

  The Sheriff, a large man with a belly, got off his horse with a little difficulty. The sun glinted on his fat, red face, and his small eyes had to squint a little. The men were close enough that we could hear them. The Sheriff took off his hat as he approached the Earl and Father. He made a low bow and said, “Greetings, My Lord,” to the Earl, and nodded to Father.

  My breath came more normally. Perhaps nothing bad would happen. The Earl welcomed the Sheriff and his men to the castle in a polite way, and introduced my father. The Sheriff responded graciously as well. Although the Sheriff was the Law and the representative of the King, the Earl owned a great portion of the shire and made the decisions about the people on it, some of them probably relatives of the Sheriff.

  Patience, who was holding my hand tightly in her own, whispered, “Maybe it will be all right.”

  While she was speaking, a carriage with the insignia of the crown rolled up over the moat and came to a stop behind the Sheriff. It must have been the other puff of dust I had seen from the roof. My heart sank. The carriage meant they were going to take somebody away.

  At that moment the Sheriff shut his eyes, opened them, and spoke very fast.

  “For non-payment of taxes, I hereby arrest you, Earl of Lincoln, in the name of our sovereign, King Charles I.”

  At this, Patience squeezed my hand so tightly I cried out in pain. Cook, behind us, began to weep.

  “Oh, what of Father, what of Father.” I spoke my thoughts out loud. I realized how much I loved him.

  “You may get some things together,” the Sheriff said.

  My father asked how long the Earl would be gone. The Sheriff shrugged and shook his head, “Who knows?” Then to the Earl, “You may take one man servant. We must search the castle.”

  THE NEXT HOUR passed in a blur. The Sheriff’s men ran through the castle looking at all the books, though of course most of them could not read their own name. They brought all the papers in the castle — some of which belonged to the Earl and some to Father or Simon — to the Sheriff, who looked through them.

  In the meantime, Father and Simon helped the Earl put together books and writing materials to occupy his time. The Geneva Bible went first. I saw Raleigh’s History go, without regret, and several other books. The Earl’s mother, his wife, Arbella, and the servants bustled about putting clothes into trunks for the carriage. Marianne ran up and down stairs with quantities of linen. Cook managed to put in a meat pie that she had baked that afternoon. The whole household, and most of the castle village, thronged inside the castle gates when it was time to leave.

  As the livery men put the trunks on the carriage, the Earl’s mother, Elizabeth, an old woman in a black dress, drew herself up.

  “Where are you taking him?” she demanded of the Sheriff.

  We had all assumed he was going to the local court in Boston.

  “To the Tower of London, Ma’am,” he replied.

  The old woman turned pale and reached out for the arm of an attendant.

  “Perhaps now others will pay what they owe.” As the Sheriff’s large, black horse pawed the ground, eager to be off, the Sheriff did not take his eyes off my father.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I WENT TO the castle roof to watch the party ride away. The sun was now setting, but I could still see shadows move along the road in the red light from the glow on the horizon. I sat there for a long time after they had passed out of sight, confused, afraid, and sick to my stomach.

  I knew about the Tower of London from stories and pictures, though I had never been to London. Father said London was a sea of dirt and pestilence, crowds of people, perhaps two hundred thousand of them, impossible to imagine, all pushing and shoving each other off the walkways into the filth of the street. He said if we minded the smell of the moat, we would faint away at the stench of London. Gentlemen and ladies always had pomanders pressed to their noses. I had seen the Earl’s wife give him one. The Earl had been to London, but this time would be different. I tried to imagine, from Father’s descriptions, what would happen to him.

  The Sheriff’s men would take him over London Bridge, with its hundred shops and houses built right onto the bridge and jutting out over the water. Beggars dressed in rags would tap at the carriage. Ladies in fine, bright clothes would saunter with baskets on their arm, buying gloves and silks. Perhaps there would be a bear baiter and a bear. It would be a spectacle, until he looked up and saw the poles on the Great South Gate, with the severed heads of so-called traitors, other Puritans and Catholics also, any who had chosen their faith over the Church of England. Some of the heads would be only skulls, and some would be parboiled and tanned. The Earl’s blood would freeze to think that his own head might be among them soon.

  Then he would see the Tower, massive, dark gray stone, not like our own cheerful brick castle. I had seen pictures of the gri
m Tower with hardly any windows. Many entered and few left, except to the execution block. I thought of how many of the Puritan martyrs had been held in the Tower, and shivered.

  I HEARD STEPS on the stairs and Patience appeared.

  “It is time for supper.” Patience knows where to find me when I am missing.

  “I do not feel like food.”

  “Mother says we must eat.”

  “You were right to worry about the Earl,” I said as we hurried down. She just shook her head, as if to say it did not matter who was right. She looked woebegone, and I wanted to hug her, to comfort us both, but there was no time.

  I slipped into my place on the bench alongside Sarah, to mind her, with Father in his chair at the head and Mother at the foot. Patience and Baby Mercy sat on the bench on the other side. On the table there was only a tureen of soup and a loaf of bread.

  Under her breath, Mother said, “Outdoor kitchens, up three huge flights, everything gets spilled, food always cold, so much waste, a castle is to keep the enemy out, not to live in.”

  “What’s that?” Father asked.

  “Nothing. The soup was spilled, and it is cold.”

  Father rose from his chair, his cheeks flushed.

  “You care about cold soup at a time like this? What is wrong with you, woman? Always carping and carrying on, even when our lives are crumbling around us.”

  Father did not usually rage at Mother, at least not in front of us children. Patience turned pale, and Baby Mercy looked like she would cry. Father did not understand that, when Mother was upset, she turned to the things she knew best. Two years ago, after Sarah almost drowned in the moat, Mother went through all the chests in the house and rearranged our clothes.

  “May I speak? I felt so much esteem for Mother at the moat today.” Ordinarily I would not speak unless spoken to, but it was urgent. Once Father began a rant he could go on forever.

  He sank back into his chair.

  “True, you were as good as a man today at the moat, Dorothy. Better, for they would not have believed that a man could have been so confused about the ropes.”

  Mother stared at him, and I could not read her face. Was she pleased with the compliment or was she angry at the backhand slap in it? I could not tell.

  Father went on for a bit, about what had happened, how lucky we were that he himself had not been taken. “Sometimes it is good fortune to have one’s nobility not a thing of common knowledge.”

  Father was always implying that we had noble blood, but that he could not tell us about it.

  “Can they hang him?” Sarah asked. Her voice sounded almost excited.

  “Commoners are hung, lords have their heads cut off,” Father explained. “It is possible, but they must try him first.”

  “When will that happen?” Mother asked.

  “Who knows? There is a limit to how long a man can be held without trial.”

  Father began to talk about habeas corpus, the principle that you must bring people to trial without imprisoning them indefinitely. His hands were moving rapidly around, and he was drinking large swigs of ale. I still had no appetite and was playing with my soup. I looked about and saw Patience sadly looking off into space. Baby Mercy was making balls out of the white portions of her bread. Sarah kicked me under the table, for no particular reason I could see other than ill humor.

  A change of topic would help.

  “Father, I thought today, when Mother was at the moat, about what you have told us about the moat at Amiens.”

  Father responded. “I know I have told you of the Spanish general, short and withered and yellow, with a red beard.”

  We all nodded.

  “And how he took Amiens in half an hour?”

  He went on with his story about how the Spanish general had invaded the walled city of Amiens, accessible only through a drawbridge over the moat. First the general hid fifteen thousand Spanish soldiers in a nearby wood. Then he dressed a dozen French-speaking Spaniards as peasants, and gave them bags of walnuts to sell near the drawbridge. The French guards were being especially careful about letting down the drawbridge, and conducted a thorough search of each vehicle. After the guards had finished questioning the driver of one wagon, they lowered the drawbridge to let him enter. At that moment the walnut sellers spilled several sacks of nuts underfoot. Everyone scrambled to pick them up, and the cart and the guards began to slip on the nuts. In the confusion the walnut sellers took control of the ropes on the gate. One of them let out a shrill whistle, and the Spanish soldiers came out of hiding and sped through the gate into town. Since it was Sunday, the French were at church, and there was no resistance. There were hardly any dead.

  I had heard the story several times before, but perhaps because of the Sheriff’s men in their uniforms demanding entrance over our own moat, this time it felt more real. I could see the walnuts scampering over the cobbled road and the guards slipping on them. I could hear the whistle and see the red banners snapping in the wind as the horse-soldiers galloped in. I imagined a smell of fear in the town, not so different from the smell around our table.

  We girls were excused. As I went to my room I heard Mother’s voice raised.

  “Old stories do not help us now. You must pay the tax. There is no question.”

  Father’s voice roared back, “Have you no conscience, woman? No feeling? The young Earl, whom I advised not to pay the tax, has been dragged to the Tower, and you believe that I should betray him and my principles so that I am saved.”

  “I am thinking only of the children.”

  “You are thinking of yourself.”

  I could hear Father walking around and I hurried away, so that he would not find me listening. I thought that he would not pay the tax, whatever Mother said.

  THAT NIGHT AS we went to sleep, Patience and I hugged each other for a moment. We were both quiet. I did not know if I could sleep but I must have been very tired. I felt myself falling, soon, with thoughts of all the events of the day swirling through my mind, including my talk with Simon.

  I woke up with a start and said, “Patience, there is a secret room in the castle!”

  “Um.” She was asleep, and I had to shake her a little to get her to listen.

  I told her about my conversation with Simon.

  “What could he have meant about rabbits?”

  “I do not know. The only rabbit in the castle that I know is the one on the mantle of the fireplace, on the second floor.”

  At that, I sat up. “Patience, that must be it. I must go and see.”

  Each floor of the castle had a huge stone fireplace, and they all had carvings on the mantel. The man who built Tattershall Castle was the King’s treasurer, and so many of the decorations around the castle were purses — not interesting. But the carvings on the second-floor fireplace were of animals and flowers, and among them there was a rabbit.

  Patience begged me to stay in bed, reminding me how angry Father would be if I were found looking for secret rooms at a time when the whole castle was supposed to be grieving for the Earl. She did not say anything about being selfish, but I knew from her tone that was what she meant.

  I was too excited to stay in bed. This would be a good time, when few people might be around.

  I had worn my shift to bed, as always, and did not trouble to put anything over it. I picked up the candle I had left on our chest when we went to bed, although there was no fire to light it from. I opened the door slowly.

  THE HALL WAS completely black. Bits of light filtered into the outside rooms from the stars and moon, but in the halls there was no light at all. I felt my way along, the bricks clammy against my hand. I stumbled once or twice, but the way was straight, and I found the staircase. The stone was cold on my bare feet. Stone stairs at least do not creak like wooden ones, so I made no sound. Not until I stumbled and missed the last two steps, landing with a jolt and a pain in my heel. I stifled the curse that came to my lips. Mother was right to complain about the uneven steps.r />
  When I reached the second floor, there was a dim light, and I saw that someone had left a candle guttering on the mantel. Now I could see my way. There seemed to be nobody about, and I walked as quietly as I could to the fireplace.

  I had noticed before that the rabbit was slightly more polished than the other carvings, as though people had reached out to touch it for many years; I had thought for luck, but perhaps it was something else. I touched the ears and nothing happened. I tried to wiggle them backwards and forwards, in every possible direction, but they did not move. Then I tried pulling them as though I were going to lift the rabbit off the mantel. I felt them move, just a little, and I heard a slight sound to my left. My heart leapt. I could not see anything. The walls of the room, like most of the castle, were covered with tapestries to brighten the walls and make them warmer in winter. Perhaps there was something under the tapestry?

  I was frightened of what I might find, and frightened that somebody might come, but I lit my candle from the one on the mantel, lifted the tapestry on the left, closest to the fireplace, and moved under it.

  It was hard to breathe, under the dusty hanging, as I crept along. And then I found a door. There was a door! Just a shabby little door, and it was ever so slightly ajar, as though a latch had been released when I pulled the rabbit ears. I gave it a little push, and it moved an inch or so, creaking loudly. I took a deep breath and pushed it hard.

  It was a small room with a small window. I could faintly smell the necessary in the corner. I held the candle up and I could see that the walls were covered with faded red hangings, so dilapidated that shreds of them were falling on the floor. There was a bed in the corner, with wool blankets on it, and a stool. Under the window a large oak chest stood, much like the one in our room, but covered with strange carvings. Men and beasts were fighting, and the roots of trees trapped all of them. It was the only place in the room where books could be hidden, yet I felt uncomfortable approaching it.