Nicola Cornick - The Phantom Tree

It was an odd moment. I felt an impulse to run to her and embrace her though I had no notion why. She dispelled that quickly enough, however, offering a cool cheek for my kiss, in the French fashion. She was seventeen years old now to my thirteen and I felt gauche in the face of such elegance.

‘You are home!’ I said, although I doubted that Alison any more than I thought of Wolf Hall as her home.

‘Only until I wed.’ She was examining the stitching on her gloves, not meeting my eyes. ‘Lord Seymour has found me a husband.’

Our cousin Edward had been restored to his earldom the year before and was even more grand now and further beyond our reach. He had been building a new house a few miles distant at Tottenham; Wolf Hall being too old and inconvenient for him. I wondered if the new house, and his plans for Alison, meant that he would be spending more time at Savernake.

‘You’re to wed.’ I parroted her words, knowing I sounded simple. There was so much I wanted to ask her but could not. She did not have a child with her. I wondered what had happened to it. Was it a boy or a girl? Where had she been, and with whom? Who had paid for the beautiful orange tawny? Cousin Edward, perhaps, since it appeared he wanted her well turned out for her marriage. Alison’s silence prevented me from blurting out any questions though. There was a wall of reserve about her and she had withdrawn behind it.

There was no suggestion this time that Alison and I should share a chamber. Suddenly she had become an adult, elevated above me. She was excused any work and spent much of her time in a huddle with the other women, talking about mysterious matters ranging from the assembly of a trousseau to the management of a household. Perhaps Liz might have thought it would be useful for me to listen and learn but, often as not, I was not invited. Dame Margery and Alison were still close as two peas in the pod and since neither of them liked me much, I was left out. I did see some of Alison’s new clothes: the scarlet wool petticoats, soft and warm, which I envied, and the fragile silk-lined slippers, which seemed a pointless extravagance. Alison’s future husband was a well-to-do yeoman but there was no question that she would need practical clothing in which to work.

‘Do you like Master Whitney?’ I asked her one day. We were in the solar and it was raining, the water running down the diamond panes like tears. For once, I had been included in the group. We were trying to embroider in the dim grey light of winter, with only one sputtering candle to aid us. My eyes smarted.

Alison let her hands rest in her lap as she looked up. ‘He is well enough. Liking has nothing to do with marriage.’

‘He likes you.’ Dame Margery dug her in the ribs, letting loose a raucous laugh. Alison gave a pale smile in return. It did not seem to please her that her future husband lusted after her but Dame Margery was right. Even I had noticed the hungriness in his eyes when he watched her. I could not have borne for him to touch me. There was something perpetually angry about him and it felt dangerous. I’d heard he had an uncertain temper and I thought Alison was making a mistake. Not that she had a choice.

‘He is wealthy and of good standing,’ Alison said. ‘I could not hope for better.’

There was an odd silence. She had sounded almost wistful.

‘But you are a gentleman’s daughter,’ I said. ‘Surely…’

She looked at me hard, though she said nothing, and I knew that she was thinking of the scandal of her pregnancy. Yes, I had been tactless. Not many men would have been prepared to wed her when her chastity was so clearly compromised. I wondered if Edward had paid Whitney handsomely to overlook it.

‘You will find,’ she said, after a moment, ‘when it is your turn, that being the daughter of a queen and a gentleman avails you nothing if you have no fortune or… beauty… to speak of. You will take what is on offer and be glad of it.’

I knew I would not.

‘I do not wish to wed,’ I said hotly. ‘I cannot see that it makes anyone very happy, so why do it?’

Dame Margery’s mouth fell open in shock at such heresy but Alison simply shook her head. ‘You are so determined to be naïve, Mary Seymour,’ she said. ‘Can you truly be in such ignorance of how the world works?’

I was not, of course. I observed the lives of others even if nothing happened to me. Yet it was true that I could see little benefit for a woman in marriage. If it were a love match, it would end in betrayal or death or both. One only needed to look at the example of my parents, or old Queen Mary, to see that. If it was a marriage for profit, then it seemed to me the advantage was usually on the man’s side for the price exacted on the woman was very high.

‘Her Majesty the Queen has not wed,’ I pointed out.

‘She will,’ Dame Margery said. She cut her thread neatly with a little pair of silver scissors. ‘She needs an heir.’

Queen Elizabeth, I realised, was exactly like a man in that respect.

‘Perhaps Lord Seymour will find you a husband at the hunting party,’ Alison said. ‘It is not just about my betrothal; there is business to be conducted.’

Thus I learned something else new. Events that were called one thing so often had a quite different purpose. I had heard that there was to be a grand celebration of Alison’s betrothal, a week of feasting and hunting in the forest. The household was already buzzing with the preparations. Yet it seemed it was not about Alison, or even about her forthcoming marriage.

‘I am too young,’ I said, to offset the chill of disquiet that touched me. ‘I am not yet fourteen.’

‘Old enough to be promised,’ Dame Margery opined. She stood up, wincing a little. ‘Ach, I’m aching all over.’

‘Take some of my juniper oil,’ Alison said. ‘It will ease your bones.’ She smiled at Dame Margery and I saw with surprise that there was genuine affection between them. I had never seen Alison offer kindness to anyone before. Nor had I thought of Dame Margery as anything other than an old woman given to small spites. Alison was right; life was not always the way I saw it.

Once Dame Margery had left the room and Alison and I were alone, I expected more of her provocation but instead we sat in silence for a while as we worked. Or rather I did. Looking at Alison, I realised that her hands were resting on the material in her lap again and she was staring into space.

‘I haven’t seen my son since he was a few weeks old,’ she said, suddenly. ‘They took him away and gave him to a wet nurse.’ She looked at me and her eyes were such a bright blue with unshed tears that I felt shocked. ‘His name is Arthur.’

I stared at her, uncomprehending. Why was she telling me this? Why now, when she had not spoken of the baby at all since her return to Wolf Hall? I could sense pain in her: huge, ungovernable pain, but I did not understand why she felt it. I had not known my mother at all but even had she lived I would have been consigned to the care of servants. She would not have raised me herself. My father had taken me to London with him as though I were just another piece of luggage, left in the hallway of his house for someone else to find and deal with. Why should Alison’s son be different?

She had seen the blankness in my eyes.

‘I would not expect you to understand,’ she said bitterly.

‘I…’ I grasped after something to say. ‘Surely when he is older you will see him again? It’s only whilst he is nursing—’

She gripped my wrist so suddenly and so sharply that I winced.

‘No,’ she said harshly. ‘I do not even know where he is. They will not give me any news. They say it is better I know nothing of him and he knows nothing of me and so it will remain for ever.’