Anne of the Fens Read online

  “Yes, Simon values intelligence, and I can tell him you are not only beautiful but also intelligent.”

  She smiled and walked away.

  PATIENCE AND I sewed and talked and enjoyed the blue sky and puffy clouds and tried to keep Sarah from tormenting Mercy. It was time for the evening meal before I knew.

  There was a lovely soup of early summer squash flavored with dill seed, and a mash of peas, and a joint of venison, which we all attacked with a will.

  Father, once again, was missing from the table. At the end of the meal two servants came to carry the food away, so like the night before I took a large empty platter and began to pile it high.

  “Who is that for?” asked Sarah. She spoke loud enough that all looked up from the table at me.

  “Speak when you are spoken to,” I said absently, as I continued to pile mashed peas on the plate. “It is for Father.”

  “Is not.”

  I looked up from the peas to see that Sarah was no longer sitting at her place next to mine at the table, but standing up and pointing at me.

  “She is lying, Mother. I know she is. She is supposed to be so good, she and Patience, but she is lying. Last night she said the food was for Father and she carried it to her room, and in the morning it was gone!”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I looked at Patience, and she too was speechless. Finally Mother came to my rescue.

  “Sarah, you graceless child, hold your tongue. What your sister does is no concern of yours. Mind your own Godless behavior — telling tales, speaking to hurt another — or you shall be in deeper trouble than you already are.”

  I took a deep breath and finished filling the plate as fast as I could. I poured ale into the largest tankard at the table, and placed a bowl of soup on the trencher. Balancing the trencher in one hand and holding the tankard in the other, I sped out of the room before Sarah could say anything more.

  I took the food and again hid it under my bed. I paced up and down the little room, from the bed to the oak chest to the window to the bed. Two servants had been present when Sarah shouted her accusations. They would talk. Then there were the footsteps I had heard the night before last when I had gone to the secret room. What if someone had been watching?

  It could have been Sarah but it could also have been servants. If it were known that John was in the house, the Sheriff’s men would come to look for him. They would find the secret room if they looked under the tapestries.

  I did not love him, no I did not, so why was my heart beating so fast? I wanted to see him, that was all. Midnight would come, but it seemed it would take forever.

  CHAPTER TEN

  FINALLY MIDNIGHT CAME. Once again, I thought I heard someone move as I started down the stairs, but I waited for a minute and then there was quiet. I had a hard time balancing the wooden trencher in the dark — the night before I had not brought soup. I tripped on the uneven stone stairs that Mother was always complaining about, and the platter slipped from my grip. I managed to catch it before it landed on the stairs, but soup spilled all over everything, including me. My green skirt and my arms were wet. I had rubbed rose petals against my forehead and my neck and wrists. Now I would smell of summer squash, not roses.

  I opened the door to the secret room to see John standing. He had heard me coming. The room carried his own scent, not of flowers or soup, but just his body.

  “Hello.”

  My voice sounded strange in my ears. The night before, I had been more distant. Tonight I was too full of worry to put on my mask of unconcern.

  He was wearing a different shift under his trousers, so he must have brought a change of clothes to the castle. He was not as tall as I had remembered him from the night I had woken him and he had attacked me. I do not know how he had shaved without water, but he had, with one or two cuts on his chin. He took the tray from me and placed it on the chest.

  “Sorry, I have spilled the soup.”

  In the candlelight I could see that the trencher, my arm, and my dress were all covered with light green soup.

  “No worry. What a good woman to try to bring me soup!”

  I felt myself blush with pleasure, especially at being called a woman.

  He sat down on the bed and began again with the ale. I took my place on the stool.

  “I was going to bring two tankards but I was in haste.”

  In a flood of words, I explained what had happened with Sarah and the servants.

  He smiled that smile that melted something in me.

  “You are worried for me, I can tell.”

  I blushed again, this time with embarrassment.

  “It will be all right. There is always danger of being discovered, even in a secret room. I shall have to leave soon, regardless.” He paused. “I will be sorry to leave you.”

  “I will be sorry, too.” My voice broke on the “sorry.”

  “Come sit beside me. We have such little time. I want to know you better.”

  He patted the bed beside him. I was reminded how I used to try to get Josie, the cat, to sit on my lap. I hesitated, but I wanted to get to know him better also. What harm could there be in sitting closer to him?

  I had stopped being aware of his scent, in the way one gets used to an odor — whether it is good or bad — in a room. As I moved closer to him, that faint muskiness was fresh in my nostrils. I wondered if my breath was clean and, again, if I smelled of squash.

  “I read Romeo and Juliet today,” he said. “A fine story. I can see you are a romantic girl to like it so. Has there been romance in your life?”

  I blushed and shook my head. It made me feel good that he appreciated my being romantic, where Simon thought it silly.

  “You are not promised to anyone?”

  I shook my head again. Girls of fifteen could be engaged, or even married, but such an early age was not common for women of my station.

  “And you?” It was a bold question, but I wanted to know. I knew women must run after any man so handsome.

  “I am a good Puritan and would not trifle with a young woman.”

  I felt a swell of relief. It was something Patience had said, that he could be engaged or even married.

  He asked me to tell him about my life in the castle.

  I was lost, at first, but after a minute of awkwardness I found my tongue. I went on about how mother hated the castle, the cold stone and the hugeness, and how I loved those things. I told about all the things I loved: the library, the red brick in the afternoon light, the carvings all about, and going to the castle roof to look out over the fens. I told about Sarah’s badness, Patience’s friendship, and my father’s temper.

  John listened and nodded and smiled and told me about his sister.

  “She is older now, but when she was younger she was very much like you.”

  He told me his father was a deacon in the church. John had gone to school and hoped to be a minister someday. He told me how sweet his sister was. She was younger than him but always looking out for him. She prepared the foods he liked best, especially a pie of pears, which was his favorite.

  I thought that I would make him a pear pie, though then I recalled that pears would not ripen for a month or two.

  We talked and talked about foods we liked and books we liked. I was excited to find that he, too, liked poetry. We quoted one or two poems we liked particularly. I told him about Milton. We had moved closer on the bed.

  His smiling face took on a serious look.

  “Today was such a fine day, even trapped inside this room. From my window, the sky was so blue and the clouds so white that I made up a poem of my own. For you. I have only the first two lines as yet.

  ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

  Thou art more lovely and more temperate.’”

  He had written me a poem. I was moved. He put his arm around me. My back and shoulder, where his arm lay, felt hot.

  I knew I should pull away but I could not. Perhaps if he had sta
rted by kissing me I would have been able to, but what he did was to raise my arm with his other hand — the one that wasn’t around my shoulder — and begin to kiss away the squash soup on my wrist.

  He smiled, and said that he could have dined off my arm. I laughed, and it took my fears away. His lips moved up my bare wrist and then over my shift and very gradually to my neck, which tingled in a way I had never felt.

  Then he kissed me. His lips against mine were so soft that all my insides went molten. His arm moved further down my back and he drew me against his body, and his kiss became harder. I knew it was a sin, and I kept telling myself get up, leave now, but it was difficult when my whole body had melted.

  Finally, when his hands began to stray, I did manage to push myself away. I was grateful that he did not press me, as my legs were trembling. If he had been insistent, I might not have been able to stand, let alone stand firm against him.

  “There will be another day, sweet Anne. I will wait till tomorrow, something to look forward to during the long day.”

  I ran out of the room before I weakened. I could hardly breathe, the air felt so heavy in my chest. Every part of me was vibrating, and I longed to go back to him. I stumbled on the stairs again, stubbing my toe, and I did not even feel the pain until much later.

  When I got to bed, Patience demanded to know what had happened; I had been gone so long, and she had been so worried. I would not tell her, and she became more and more upset. Finally I burst into tears, and she held me. I could not have said why I cried, but my feelings were so confused and intense there seemed no other way to express them. I think Patience guessed something of what had happened, without my saying, although she may have feared that even more had happened.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT SEEMED I had barely fallen asleep when the sun came up at five o’clock. It was time to get up to go to Boston for church. Never was one more in need of church and spiritual guidance than I, I thought. As I staggered out of bed, I noted the book of Milton’s poems on the floor underneath and remembered that I had not finished reading Simon’s paper.

  I was so tired from lack of sleep, not only the night before but the previous nights, that I fell asleep immediately in the carriage. I woke with a start as we neared town. We were on a rise, and I could see the tower of our church, its bells calling us through the clatter of the horses.

  There on the right was the gallows. It stood at the top of the rise, stark against the pale morning sky. Last year a thief had hung there. The image of his face, drawn back into a fearful smile, returned again and again in my dreams. I saw John’s wondrous smile transformed into that image.

  Much as my mind willed it away, that sight returned throughout the day as I tried to listen to Reverend Cotton. If John were caught, he would be hung. There was no question. If Father forced him to leave, he would be caught. Father would throw him out if he knew what we were doing in the secret room. We both would be punished.

  Remembering the night before, I melted all over again. My knees went weak and I felt faint. I had found a poem in an old book in the library, mixed in with more religious poetry. I did not think Simon would have approved of it, but I loved it, and it was what kept going through my head. “Christ, if my love were in my arms and I in my bed again.” And then I saw the image of John’s smile, transformed into the thief’s smile, from the gallows.

  THE FAIR WAS over now, and there was much less traffic into town. As we entered the market square, I spied the beggar man standing alone and watching our carriage. I looked away before he could catch my eye.

  Entering the church, I took Sarah by the hand to be sure she did not run away. She had been surprisingly quiet that morning. She had let me sleep in the carriage, while it was her usual habit to kick or pinch me if I fell asleep. She was carrying a small purse, a nicety she usually disdains.

  This day we planned to stay for afternoon services also, though it meant getting home very late. Now that the Earl was gone, Father’s time was freer. At the noon break we went into the market square, unlike other Sundays when we ate with Reverend Cotton in his home, or someone else invited us to their house. Today there was no rain, though the sky had turned gray, so it was pleasant to walk around the square. I checked the market posting board for notices about items for sale and events in Boston, and was glad I did not have to go to the eel-fishing contest to see who could catch the most eels, or the largest eel.

  We had bread and cheese that Cook had packed for us, and we went around to vendors to see what else they were offering. Sarah escaped from me for a time, and came back with a small treacle tart stuffed into her mouth.

  When we returned for afternoon service, my mind was again caught in the wonder of the night before and fear of the consequences. I tried to think of what I should do this coming night. I prayed for guidance, but none came. I was afraid that once I saw John again and felt his smile, I would give in completely. Patience sat next to me, and I know she felt my turmoil.

  She finally whispered in my ear, “Send me tonight.”

  It was the answer. I felt such relief. And terrible disappointment. I told myself it would give me time to compose myself, to think about what I truly wanted.

  When we left the church, Father and Simon ahead of Mother and us girls as usual, there was a crowd — twenty or more — in the market place, and they seemed to be gathered about the posting board. We continued on toward our carriage without paying it much mind. Father does not like crowds, but I would have liked to see what was posted. At that moment, the old beggar in the rat-brown cloak appeared. He tried to get Father’s attention, and Father brushed him aside. He then sidled up to me and grabbed me by my sleeve. I recoiled and thought how different the touch of a man on your arm could feel.

  In a low voice the beggar man said, “Two things. First, for John Holland,” and he handed me a piece of paper, which I pushed into my purse. “Second, you must listen. That notice on the board is about your family, and it means trouble for all of you.”

  I pushed forward to get to Father’s side and repeated the message.

  “Go see what it is,” he said to Simon, but I pretended he meant me too.

  The two of us raced off into the market square toward the posting board. Simon was faster so I fell behind, but when we reached the crowd of people I pushed through more quickly, being smaller. Squeezing between a fat miller in a big white apron and a smelly man who must have been a tanner, I got close enough to see the board. On it, posted low, was the page Simon had addressed to me about religious tolerance and the error of the King’s policies.

  I could not believe it. It was as though some private dream, like the one about riding the horse on the fen, should have become written across the sky.

  Sarah! It must have been she. The paper was attached right at the level she could reach. Who else would do such a thing? She was the only one who would not realize that to attack the King was treason.

  What should I do? My name was on it. Anne Dudley has asked a wicked question... Everybody had already seen that, but it seemed better to take the paper. Perhaps no one would tell the Sheriff. I pulled it off and tucked it under my arm. The miller tried to stop me, but I wriggled out of his floury arms. I pushed back through the crowd. The miller cried, “Stop,” but nobody thought he meant me, a young girl of no consequence. As I ran back across the marketplace toward our carriage, I saw one of the Sheriff’s men in his red shirt approaching the board.

  Simon ran beside me. “What was it? What was it?”

  I showed him, as we hastened along. He turned pale when he saw it. He looked at me questioningly, and I said simply, “Sarah.”

  He nodded, and was completely silent for a while.

  “Tell your father I will talk to him at the castle, and get everyone out of here as fast as you can,” he said finally, as he veered off toward the stable where his horse was kept.

  When I reached Father I was too afraid to speak. I handed him the paper and pointed behind me to the Sherif
f’s man sauntering toward the notice board.

  “Hurry, we must hurry,” I said.

  Mother saw the urgency, if Father did not. She bustled us all, including Father, into the carriage and signaled to the driver to go fast. She might not have known what was happening but she knew how Father would attract attention to himself if he began to bellow.

  Father was puzzling through the document.

  He muttered, “What the Devil. Simon has written this piece of nonsense?”

  When he was more than half-way through, at the part about the King, he exploded in a stream of curses unlike anything I had ever heard, including portions of God’s anatomy that I was unsure about.

  After several minutes, during which Mother had her ears covered and the rest of us sat like stone, he demanded to know what had happened.

  I spoke, the words thick in my throat, explaining that Simon had given me this to read, and that I had hidden it under my bed within a book.

  “And how did it wander into the Boston market?” he bellowed.

  Nobody said anything for a while.

  “It was posted low on the board,” I said, finally.

  “Sarah,” he barked.

  “Father, Anne is the bad girl, not me.” Sarah spoke quickly. “She takes food from the table and says it is for you, and she is lying. She hides it under her bed. I followed her and I saw. This paper was hidden under her bed too. Mother will not listen to me about how bad she is. Anne gets up in the middle of the night and wanders about. She is up to something sinful. Nobody would listen to me. I thought if I put this up in the market, you and everyone would have to see how bad she is. It says Anne is wicked.”

  Sarah could read a little, but not well.

  “Pull over!” Father yelled to the coachman.

  Then he said to Sarah, “I am too angry to deal with you. I could hurt you.”

  I was surprised. I had never seen Father so angry, but he knew himself well enough to hold himself in check. He clambered over me and for the rest of the ride, almost three hours, he sat with the driver. Every few minutes we heard curses shouted to the sky.